After calling Netflix their home for the last decade, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer officially jumped ship to Paramount last month with a massive deal encompassing feature films and TV shows. While speaking with Variety, the Duffers explained that the move had everything to do with wanting to release a feature film in theaters.
“When Matt and I were talking about what we want to do next, it really came down to we wanted to do a movie, specifically an original movie — a big original film,” Ross Duffer said. “And theatrical is so important to us.” He added that they weren’t looking for a new deal elsewhere, but when Paramount approached them, they couldn’t turn it down. “It’s just something we dreamed about since we were little kids,” he said.
While their focus will be on original movies, Matt Duffer said they’re not opposed to handling an existing IP, but they’d rather it be something they can improve. “The market is so flooded with IP and sometimes it’s like IP that doesn’t mean anything,” Matt Duffer said. “I don’t understand that. How is that bring any value to anything? I like IP that was botched. Someone swung and missed. Then you have an opportunity to do it properly.” I would agree. Far too often, executives feel compelled to remake beloved classics that don’t need it. As Matt said, a better approach is revisiting projects with strong ideas that fell short in execution.
The pair will also develop TV projects for Paramount, which will be shorter shows with between 8 and 10 episodes. “I get fatigued watching 20-episode seasons,” Matt said. “We didn’t grow up interested in any of that. We only watched movies. That’s the weird thing that we ended up in TV, because we had almost zero interest in television.” The Duffers have one movie under their belts, the 2015 psychological thriller Hidden, which stars Alexander Skarsgård, Andrea Riseborough, and Emily Alyn Lind.
The Duffer brothers still have a handful of projects at Netflix, including the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, which will be released in three parts, with volume one on November 26, volume two on Christmas Day, and the series finale on New Year’s Eve. There’s also Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, an animated series, and a potential spin-off series that might have Twin Peaks vibes.
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