BEVERLY HILLS – If Netflix is worried about “Stranger Things” being an Emmy force they shouldn’t be. The Duffer Brothers’ creation became a pop culture sensation when it debuted last summer and surprised many by winning the PGA Award for Best Drama and the SAG Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series in January (not to mention being listed on a ton of critic’s top 10 lists). Six months later, the industry passion hasn’t wavered. Emmy voters packed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Theater on Tuesday night for a screening of the pilot episode and a Q&A with the Duffers and almost the entire cast.
Series creators and showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer, executive producer Shawn Levy and stars Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard and Caleb McLaughlin were all on hand. The always mercurial Winona Ryder, a potential nominee, was not.
First off, you put Gaten, Noah, Millie, Finn and Caleb together and you’re going to get a power punch of genuine adorableness that lives up to the hype. They were hilarious as most 14 and 15-year-olds having the time of their lives would be. Second, the Duffers and the cast spent a good 10 minutes of the almost 40 minute Q&A talking about the highly anticipated season two which just finished shooting on Monday. There are some things we know about the new season already, obviously. It will take place around Halloween, 1984 and Eleven (Brown) will return. Beyond that, details have been kept pretty close to the vest.
Keeping that in mind, here are some non-spoiler-y revelations about season two that will wet your appetite.*
*And, yes, it’s possible some of these items were revealed elsewhere, but it was news to us.
Look for a “Ghostbusters” influence this season
Matt Duffer reveals, “What’s fun for us is we have this group of boys we believe would be obsessed with these movies. ‘Ghostbusters‘ plays the biggest role because there’s no way they wouldn’t be obsessed with that when it came out that summer.” Ross Duffer also says to look for potential references to other big 1984 hits such as “Temple of Doom,” “Gremlins” and “The Karate Kid.”
Shocker: Unsatisfied people are the best to work with
Matt Duffer had some pretty serious things to say about people who are satisfied at work. He’s not really a fan of them. “I don’t trust anyone you work with who’s always happy with themselves. The best people are always unhappy. They feel like they can be better, and so that’s great. We all got another chance at it, and the people who were really content are like, ‘We’re gone.’ We got rid of them. It saves your back because you want people who consistently want to improve and that they can do better. I think we do a lot better than season one, you know what I mean? They were asking what they were doing when it first came out. We were forced to watch it at a friend’s house and it was painful. You just see everything that’s wrong with it, so you just want to do better. That’s what we tried to do. That’s what’s great about it. The fact that people were watching gives you an opportunity to go to bat at it.”
Season two will feature more concurrent storylines and new characters
Matt Duffer notes, “We’ll see at the end of the day because we’re still editing, but the scripts at least, were longer, there are more storylines going on. There’s more story this season and so there are more events. So, it just took longer to film them, there’s a little more visual effects component and there’s new characters. I feel like we’re close to setting a record for scene counts in TV shows. I think episode eight was 140 or something.”
Will there be more surprise deaths in season two? Probably
The Duffers were asked about why they killed off characters such as Barb (Shannon Purser) and Benny (Chris Sullivan) who ended up being fan favorites. There was a reason. “I remember when we wrote the pilot and the reason we felt so like we really needed to include the Benny thing, is because we wanted to clarify, in case anyone was confused that this wasn’t a show just for kids and that this is not a show where the kids are necessarily safe,” Matt Duffer says. “Because then, when I watch stuff like ‘The Goonies’ I felt like these kids are in danger. His hand is going in that blender. It’s scared me as a child.” Yeah, there are probably more unexpected departures in the works.
