Before Hawkins, there was Marion. That is the line Netflix put on the first teaser for Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, the live-action prequel it announced on Friday, and the show opens in Marion, Nevada on April 19, 1955.
The teaser runs under a minute. A bicycle lies on its side while a radio plays “Sh-Boom,” a title card gives the town and the date, and then the sky tears open. The bicycle is the most Stranger Things image available, but the song is the better choice, because a doo-wop record under a hole in the sky is stranger than any synth cue would have been.
Kate Trefry Runs It and Joe Wright Directs the First Three Episodes
Kate Trefry created the series with Matt and Ross Duffer and will write and showrun it. She has written for Stranger Things since the second season and wrote Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the stage prequel, from a story she built with the Duffers and Jack Thorne. Joe Wright, whose features include Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Darkest Hour, directs the first three episodes and executive produces.
The Duffers executive produce through Upside Down Pictures rather than running the show day to day, since their exclusive overall deal now sits at Paramount, and Shawn Levy returns as an executive producer. Production sets up in New Mexico, and no cast has been announced.
“We’ve been dreaming of Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure for many years now,” the Duffers said, signing off with “watch the skies, nerds!” Trefry said the brothers “gave me my first paying job in Hollywood, and it has been a joy and a fever dream ever since.”
1955 Puts It Ahead of ‘The First Shadow’
Stranger Things: The First Shadow runs mostly in 1959 Hawkins and turns on Henry Creel, the boy who becomes Vecna, and on the Nevada experiment behind him. Other Worlds sits four years earlier and in a Nevada town of its own. Per Deadline, it will account for the rock Henry turns up in the Nevada caves.
Netflix timed the announcement to November 6, the date it marks every year as Stranger Things Day. Other Worlds arrives on Netflix in 2028.