Stranger Things is officially coming to London’s West End. Check out a teaser below for the play set a quarter of a century before the Netflix smash.
Deadline revealed last year that Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers were launching a shingle along with the Stephen Daldry-helmed stage play and a multitude of other projects and today’s news is confirmation, with Stranger Things: The First Shadow set to begin its run at the Phoenix Theatre later this year once Paul Mescal’s A Streetcar Named Desire turn comes to an end.
Stranger Things writer Kate Trefry is penning the play based on an original story by the Duffers and His Dark Materials scribe Jack Thorne.
The play also counts some of the industry’s finest among its director and producer lineup. Acclaimed screenwriter and playwright Daldry is directing with Justin Martin, and 21 Laps is producer alongside the prolific Sonia Friedman Productions and Netflix.
The First Shadow is set in Stranger Things’ home of Hawkins in 1959, around 25 years before the smash hit TV series. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and leave town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.
Daldry is understood to have spent a year working with masters of illusion to develop magic tricks and special effects for the play. He set up a series of workshops to help the creative team assess how the effects would look in the production.
“Collaborating with the brilliant Stephen Daldry has been nothing short of inspiring, and Kate Trefry has written a play that is at turns surprising, scary, and heartfelt,” said the Duffer Brothers. “You will meet endearing new characters, as well as very familiar ones, on a journey into the past that sets the groundwork for the future of Stranger Things.”
Friedman, whose credits include The Book of Mormon and Ghosts, said Stranger Things “enabled a rich and fertile ground for creating an incredible story for the stage.”
The Phoenix Theatre has become quite the location for hit shows and A Streetcar Named Desire starring Oscar nominee Mescal transfers there from the Almeida later this month. Landing Stranger Things is a major coup. The fantasy thriller’s latest season is Netflix’s most watched English language show of all time and Stranger Things has launched the career of a number of budding young stars, while making household names of the Duffers.