From ‘House of Cards’ to ‘Orange is the New Black’, Netflix has made quite the name for itself over the past few years. Their latest success story was this summer’s surprise hit ‘Stranger Things‘. Created by the Duffer Brothers, the show is a sci-fi/horror series profoundly informed by the pop culture and genre films of the 1980s.
A second season ‘Stranger Things’ was recently confirmed for next year, and given the unexpected success of the first season, the pressure on the creative staff must understandably be massive. Producer Shawn Levy addressed that and more in a recent conversation with Southern California Public Radio. Said Levy of the challenges inherent to such a follow up:
“Yes, the pressure is on. It would be so blatantly disingenuous of me to say differently. It’s scary to have people love something this much. It becomes impossible to banish all thoughts of not wanting to disappoint. This has been the challenge of it: on the one hand as we’ve seen in the movie world, to do a follow-up that feels like the same thing is disappointing to an audience; to abandon things or change things [from the original], that disappoints the audience.
A lot of Season Two is next-level, some crazy stuff, but we must service these characters who are now beloved, who are known to the audience.”
On the subject of those beloved characters, Levy also devoted some time to those beloved characters and the young actors who play them. Noting that the Duffer Brothers’ approach to writing is to base their characters to some extent on qualities that they see in the actors, Levy acknowledges the inherent difficulty in applying that technique to characters who will by necessity age along with the actors playing them, he added:
“I think we’re going to stay honest with these kids by growing with them.”
Also on the subject of the show’s child actors aging, Levy noted:
“We had dinner with the kids. We could see it right in front of us. They are not the same. They are still, thank God, charming and authentic, but it is a different form of those things.”
Season Two of ‘Stranger Things’ will premiere on Netflix on an unspecified date in 2017. Stay tuned to ScienceFiction.com for more news as it happens!
