In 2011, just four years after film school at Chapman University, in Orange County, California, the brothers sold a script to Warner Bros. for a post-apocalyptic thriller called ‘Hidden’. Suddenly, the Duffers had a real Hollywood budget. “It was this insane situation,” Matt said. “Ross and I go, ‘Oh, this is the dream. We did it.'”
The film, about a family trapped underground as shadowy creatures roam the surface, brings up themes familiar to any ‘Stranger Things’ fan: a precocious child, government conspiracies, an exploding rat. What the finished film lacked, the studio decided, was commercial viability. It went straight to video in 2015.
Matt and Ross thought their short career was over. But then the script found its way to Shyamalan, who was impressed and hired them to write for the Fox puzzle box drama “Wayward Pines.” His confidence helped them get back on track. “Stranger Things” soon followed.
“Many of me are very thankful for that, because I got beat up,” Matt said, reflecting on their experience with “Hidden.” “Because I just appreciated this so much more and didn’t take it for granted.”
Early critiques of ‘Stranger Things’ argued that it was little more than ’80s karaoke – a collection of greatest hits that charms but lacks the genius of original art. Matt and Ross have never held back about their influences — their original pitch described the show “as if Steven Spielberg was directing a long-lost Stephen King novel,” Ross said. (To come full circle, the Duffers are expected to join Spielberg as executive producers on the Netflix series “The Talisman,” a highly anticipated adaptation of the novel co-written by King.)
But some critics, such as Slate’s Willa Paskin, have questioned whether comparing “Stranger Things” to Spielberg was missing something essential about Spielberg’s work. “ET” evokes such powerful nostalgia these days, they claim, because Spielberg captured his own time exactly. Wouldn’t it be better to give the children of today something similar?
