“Our Jaws Just Dropped”: Matt and Ross Duffer on the Surprise of Bringing STRANGER THINGS to the Stage

The Duffer Brothers have told of their surprise at being approached to turn Stranger Things into stage play.

Speaking to The Times, Matt and Ross Duffer said that their "jaws dropped" when Netflix got in touch in 2018 to say that Stephen Daldry wanted to turn their show into a play.

“We thought, ‘Stephen Daldry wants to do a stage play of our show?’ He had seen Cursed Child and he liked the idea of trying to do something very cinematic on stage.” Matt Duffer said.

“We thought: ‘What can we do in a theatre that hasn’t been seen before?’ ” Ross said. As the brothers were working out a new story with Daldry, the producer Sonia Friedman (also the producer of Cursed Child) and the writer Jack Thorne (the main writer of Cursed Child), they came up with the idea of making the story into a prequel and moving the setting back to 1959. The show follows the arrival of Henry Creel to Hawkins, Indiana, who goes on to become the monstrous Vecna. 

A lot of the planning happened during the pandemic, when we were also planning seasons four and five,” Ross says. “It’s been a long journey.” 

When asked about the significance of the Eighties setting, the brothers said the show is also about other things: “It’s about friendship, it’s about family,” Ross says. “Coming together to overcome incredible odds. And a seemingly perfect suburban world beneath which is a darkness.”

“There is an element of nostalgia. But we hope not tied indelibly to the Eighties. I think we’ve explored pretty much every aspect of Eighties culture we can.”

The brothers also explain why season five has to be it for Stranger Things, the TV series,  “We always had this ending,” Matt says. “It’s about youth; it’s a coming-of-age story. So in terms of the cast getting too old . . . It’s about the friendships you have growing up. To continue beyond high school would sort of betray what the show is about.”

After working on the TV show for a decade, they are now looking at making that final series. “It’s such a daunting task, it’s on such a massive scale,” Ross says, “that I think that fear is the overwhelming emotion at the moment. But saying goodbye will be really hard as we near the end. It will be sad for sure.”

“But I think this play is helping us,” Matt says. “It’s an example of how this world can continue beyond the TV show.”

Stranger Things: The First Shadow is at The Phoenix Theatre from November 17 - 25 August

Photo Credit: Full Cast, Manuel Harlan