The Duffer Brothers are getting ready to turn Netflix upside down.
After engineering another smash-hit season of Stranger Things, the fraternal showrunners have announced Upside Down Pictures, a production company that already has at least five different projects in development. The new studio is a partnership between The Duffer Brothers and Hilary Leavitt, who is perhaps best known for producing the award-winning BBC America series Orphan Black.
Unsurprisingly, two of the Upside Down projects revealed thus far are set in the Stranger Things universe. The Duffer Brothers will work with Tony winner Stephen Daldry to create a stage play inspired by the show that made them famous. They are also planning a live-action Stranger Things spinoff, which is purportedly based on an original idea.
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No one can blame The Duffer Brothers for capitalizing on the success of their nostalgic horror drama. Even though there’s only one more season of Stranger Things left, the show is arguably at the height of its popularity. Its recently-released fourth season is not just its most-watched installment — it’s also the most-viewed English-language Netflix season of all time. It recorded 1.15 billion hours of watch time across its first 28 days of availability. Only Squid Game boasts a bigger audience, but the Korean thriller hasn’t pushed any 80s jams back onto the Billboard charts (yet).
Upside Down Pictures will go beyond the franchise that lends it its title. In a statement, The Duffer Brothers said they “aim to create the kind of stories that inspired the Duffers growing up – stories that take place at that beautiful crossroads where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, where big spectacle co-exists with intimate character work, where heart wins out over cynicism.”
Stories that fit that description include an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Talisman and an original series from creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews. One Upside Down project that is sure to generate a lot of headlines is a planned live-action adaptation of Death Note. Netflix has already tried adapting the celebrated manga series once before, and it didn’t go so well. But that was a film, and this will be a series, so The Duffer Brothers will have more space to examine the sinister machinations of antihero Light Yagami.
For now, we can expect the majority of Upside Down productions — if not all of them — to be released via Netflix. The Duffer Brothers signed a multi-year overall deal with their streaming partner back in 2019, when Stranger Things earned its season four renewal.
