Stranger Things almost didn’t happen: Why 15+ studios rejected the show before Netflix accepted it

Stranger Things seemed destined to become a Netflix phenomenon, but its road to streaming glory was, most of the time, paved with rejection. Before the first Demogorgon ever emerged from the Upside Down, Stranger Things was rejected over and over again by more than 15 different studios.

Many executives did not grasp and understand the Duffer brothers’ pitch—a show that stars kids but is mostly curated for adults—and urged them to reshape it entirely or abandon their vision.

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Stranger Things being a vision too strange for Hollywood

The road to Stranger Things was anything but smooth and steady. Even though Matt and Ross, a.k.a. The Duffer Brothers, had an extremely clear-cut vision about the premise of the show, only a few others could understand it.

The creators told Rolling Stone that one of the studios said to them,

“You either gotta make it into a kids show or make it about this Hopper [detective] character investigating paranormal activity around town…”

To this, Matt Duffer said,

“Then we lose everything interesting about the show…”

Initially titled ‘Montauk’, the show was originally meant to be set in a discreet Long Island town famously known because of the alleged government experiments known as the Montauk Project.

The Duffer Brothers inculcated all of that mystery into their writing, drawing on the conspiracies of psychic children and government covers.

They filled their writings with references from E.T. and Stand by Me, which allowed them to draw visually on their scripts. And yet, the studios and executives highly struggled to even imagine a horror show led mainly by children.

However, there was one studio that saw the vision and finally came around and accepted the offer. Netflix, the streaming platform, is what jumped on accepting and greenlighting this phenomenon of a show.

A Netflix executive says,

“We were green-lighting a season of television from two creators who had no track record whatsoever, and we’re going to give them, say tens of millions of dollars to make a season television… This was always terrifying. It was a trial by fire.”

And boy, oh boy, did this leap of faith taken by Netflix pay off. Stranger Things blew off rooftops after its debut in 2016 due to its story, its script, its actors, and The Duffer Brothers.

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Redefining genre TV With Stranger Things

By the time Stranger Things hit the OTT screens on Netflix, the initial story and script had significantly been altered. The small Long Island town named Montauk was scrapped off for a new (now iconic) town of Hawkins, located in Indiana. This change, the brothers admitted, was a difficult one,

“Even though it was heartbreaking at the time, it made for a better show.”

The Upside Down, too was not always meant to be included in the final draft of the project, but almost 10 years later, here we are with The Upside Down still creeping at the back of our necks.

Originally meant to be called “The Nether," this world only picked up pace when production had already begun at full speed. The brothers eventually came to the conclusion that “The Nether” did not have enough mystery attached to it, and they needed the utmost amount of horror to reek from this creepy world.

So, then came The Upside Down, with its use of practical effects and a music score that matched the aura of this alternate netherworld.

These tiny changes aren’t the only changes that were made. While season 1 had its focus on comparatively much more ‘kiddie’ themes, as the seasons and the kids themselves grew, the show started to get more mature as time went on. Matt Duffer says,

“If you look at the Harry Potter films, as the kids grow, the series becomes a little more adult, a little bit more mature. That was something we wanted to do…”

The road from hearing a strong ‘no’ to eventually going on to curate something so phenomenal wasn’t easy for the Duffer Brothers.

Being rejected by top film schools and 15+ studios, their perseverance eventually became their strongest weapon and one of the most important bases for getting Stranger Things to see the light of day and the darkness of The Upside Down.

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Stranger Things did not just survive being rejected a countless number of times—it succeeded because of the Duffer Brothers and their belief in the story they wanted to tell. What other studios thought was too strange, the show eventually became one of Netflix’s most loved shows. The success the show has come to have only proves that sometimes stranger ideas are worth fighting for.

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