The road to Broadway
In a strang(er) way, Stranger Things and Netflix have grown up together. The series debuted in the summer of 2016, only a few years into the DVD-by-mail company’s makeover as a streaming-forward original content producer. Despite a quiet launch, that first season made an immediate impression, attracting over 14 million viewers in its first 35 days.
Trefry joined the Stranger Things writing staff during Season 2 as the Duffer brothers expanded the show’s vision and lore, and Netflix built out its own consumer infrastructure. A mobile game arrived in the iOS and Android stores ahead of the sophomore year’s October 2017 premiere, and the following year brought a line of Penguin Random House books, a Dark Horse comic series, and collectible toys from major toymakers like McFarlane.
Flash-forward to the present day, and Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s premier licenses and affords brands over $27 million in placement value.
“It’s a classic example of convergence culture,” notes Phillips, pointing to Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as complementary analogues. “It’s driven by fans who want more of their favorite characters or worlds, and producers who hunger for a transmedial franchise because it offers multiple revenue streams.”
Creatively, Stranger Things’ many and varied brand extensions have built out the franchise without building on top of it. Trefry says that the early waves of books, comics, and games were intended as non-canonical tales that made use of existing characters and storylines, but had more freedom with the mythology.
That changes with The First Shadow, which is part of official Hawkins history. Developed concurrently with the show’s fourth and fifth seasons, the play provides the Duffer-authorized origin story of Henry Creel a.k.a. Vecna—the Big Bad behind all of the town’s supernatural goings-on.
At a recent screening event, the siblings revealed that the material was originally intended to be part of Season 4, but was sacrificed for lack of available screentime. “We didn’t have room to put in everything that we wanted to about Henry,” Ross Duffer remarked.
