Stranger Things: How it became a global sensation

Stranger Things was the retro science-fantasy romp we hadn’t realised we needed in our lives. This love letter to Stephen King, mid-period Spielberg, John Carpenter and chopper bikes was released without fanfare by Netflix in the summer of 2016 – and immediately struck a chord. And not only with Gen Xers who had grown up in the early ’80s setting so lovingly recreated by creators Matt and Ross Duffer (those same Gen Xers were secretly in a tizzy over the fact Winona Ryder was playing the “mom” character). It scored big with millennials too.

Overnight, Netflix had an old-school, viral smash on its hands. Barb, the cruelly dispatched best friend of heroine Nancy (Natalia Dyer), was immortalised in a million memes and gifs (Top Shop is currently selling a line of Barb tees, bearing the words “Never Forget”). Dungeons & Dragons became almost cool again (not really – but we can dream). Fifteen years after a shoplifting scandal destroyed her career, Winona was finally rehabilitated.

Now Netflix is taking the obvious step of giving us more Stranger Things. True to the pulpy matinee sensibility of the original, the second season is titled Stranger Things 2 and naturally comes with a movie-poster title card that evokes The Goonies and ET – the cinematic touchstones to which it remains unapologetically indebted.

The streaming giant has struck upon a gold mind with Stranger Things, as it owns the property lock stock and barrel. That’s in contrast to other “in-house” franchises such as House Of Cards, licensed from outside parties (Sony in the case of HOC). That means every cent it makes off the series is its to keep – including that lucrative merchandising revenue. Understanding it has stumbled onto one of its biggest money-spinners to date, Netflix has been at pains to nurture the golden goose. Second time around, the budget has been significantly raised – by a reported $2 million per episode. The first teaser trailer was meanwhile unveiled amid clangorous hype at the Super Bowl – traditionally the launchpad for upcoming blockbusters. We are living in an era in which a TV show fondly pastiching big summer movies is more of a deal than actual big summer movies.

Even if you could care less for reheated ’80s sci-fi popcorn, it’s hard not to cheer on the Duffers. These North Carolina identical twins had schlepped around the fringes of the film industry for a decade, with the release of their first feature, Hidden, delayed four years by Warner Brothers (an experience that soured them on the movie business and encouraged them to consider television as an alternative).

That they brought Stranger Things to screen might be considered a minor miracle. When the Duffers started pitching a retro science fantasy show everybody said no – except Netflix, which sensed they were on to something (and suggested bringing Ryder on board).

“First we had this idea for a show, and never in a million years did we think we’d get it on a place like Netflix.” Matt Duffer told The Guardian recently. “We had a difficult experience at Warner Bros with our first studio movie, and we came away a little disillusioned. Then we went around pitching a lot of movie ideas and no one seemed to care about them. They really wanted to know if we had any television ideas. “We were seeing TV becoming increasingly cinematic, with stuff like True Detective,” added Ross. “And Game Of Thrones opened up ‘genre TV’ and showed it doesn’t have to be cheesy.”

Season two is an expansion of the first series – it’s bigger, louder, brasher, but not fundamentally different. A year has passed since an extra-planar monster stalked the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Now, even weirder forces are stirring in the woods, while several familiar faces from the original – characters we had been led to believe were gone forever – are returning.

“Looking at Twitter the morning after we launched,” recalled Matt, “it was shocking that people had already finished watching the entire show. So then we’re, like, well, some people are going to like this. But doing season two… there’s a whole world of expectations. They’ve given us bigger budgets, so the challenge is how to keep your eye on the core principles. And the truth is, it’s not the monster that made people watch — it’s just the kids.”

Stranger Things 2 is out on Netflix now.