![]() The film, about a family trapped underground while shadowy creatures roam the surface, establishes themes familiar to any “Stranger Things” fan: a precocious child, government conspiracies, an exploding rat. “Ross and I are going: ‘Oh, this is the dream. “It was this insane situation,” Matt said. for a post-apocalyptic thriller called “Hidden.” Suddenly the Duffers had a real Hollywood budget. In 2011, just four years out of film school at Chapman University, in Orange County, Calif., the brothers sold a script to Warner Bros. The music “was mostly Danny Elfman playing out of a boom box.” In another, a boy in a Freddy Krueger mask seasons a severed hand with salt. In one scene, a character shoots another with a Nerf bow-and-arrow. Their first was based on the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering. Starting around the fourth grade, the brothers began making movies with Smith, whose parents had a VHS camcorder. Friday movie night was sacrosanct, and Allen took his sons to see every new release in theaters that he could. Eventually, their tastes expanded to Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton. “I was always surprised at their attention span, even at a young age,” he said. Their father, Allen Duffer, a film buff who worked in a local research lab, said the boys had been movie fanatics since they were toddlers. They were born in 1984 - the year after the timeline of “Stranger Things” begins - and grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Durham. It may help that the Duffers were raised far away from Hollywood. “When we hang out, it’s mostly, like, go to dinner, play board games, watch a movie, talk about the industry,” he added. “They’re still some of the most down to earth people I know,” said Tristan Smith, a friend since early childhood who today is a creative director at Google. Both are blue-eyed handsome, but mercifully, they were easy to tell apart: Matt’s hair is longer, and he appeared to be the more animated and fidgety of the two Ross’s voice is deeper, and his manner seemed a bit more circumspect. They dress in sweatshirts and tennis shoes and rarely go out. “We love the part of making a show, the process of making it, and not everything else so much that comes with it,” Matt added. “There’s a reason we’re behind the camera - that’s where we feel more comfortable,” Ross said over pizzas after a long morning of playbacks and color correction. Unlike their teenage cast members - say, Millie Bobby Brown or Gaten Matarazzo - they rarely get stopped on the street. With few exceptions, the Duffers have kept their press engagement to a minimum. They had made a feature-length movie, but it never saw theaters.īut if fans know little more about them today than they did six years ago, it’s not for lack of appetite. They had written a few scripts, directed a few shorts. IF THE DUFFER BROTHERS seemed to come out of nowhere when the now-famous opening sequence of “Stranger Things” first rolled out, that’s because by most measures, they had. Say this about the Duffers, 38, who as two virtually unknown brothers from North Carolina created one of the biggest pop TV phenomena of the Streaming Age: It hasn’t paid to underestimate them so far. Will fans still flock to “Stranger Things”? (Want to feel old? Caleb McLaughlin and Sadie Sink are 20.) Plenty can change in three years, including viewer attention. Meanwhile, the tone is decidedly shifting this season (think “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Hellraiser”), and its young cast has been shaving for at least a few years. For now, they seem content to let the fans decide Netflix has proved willing to support their expanding vision. With episodes like short movies (three of the first four are 75 minutes or more), one might worry that the Duffers have succumbed to excess. “You want me to say it out loud?” he asked. ![]() “How long is the episode right now?” Ross asked their editor Dean Zimmerman about the episode on the screen. There was just so much material to get through. That was the main reason they had decided to release it in two chunks, Ross said. The pandemic had already caused significant delays, and the new season is five hours longer than any previous one. And “Stranger Things,” as Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, told me last month, is “probably our biggest, most enduring content brand that we’ve created.” This was the same day the company lost about $50 billion of its market value.ĭuring the two days I observed them, the Duffers, who continue to direct, write and oversee “Stranger Things,” had enough on their plates just getting things manageable. With competing streamers gaining ground, it was safe to say that Netflix needed a giant hit.
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