The STRANGER THINGS Team on The Difficulties of Selling The Show and Getting The Rights To "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
Stranger Things wasn't an easy sell when the Duffer Bros. were out pitching the idea. The series could have very well not happened, but thanks to the open minds of Netflix, it did. For some reason, a lot of studio and network executives didn't like the idea. I'm sure they're all kicking themselves in the asses now.
While talking about the series and its road to development, the creative team shared some the difficulties that they came across in the process. During a recent panel for the series hosted by Variety, creators, writers, and directors Matt and Ross Duffer said they originally were looking to make a feature film. However, Matt explained that "Nobody wanted to hear movie ideas. They wanted to hear television ideas."
What does that say about the state of Hollywood right now? Studios are not looking for original ideas. It just confirms that remakes, reboots, and sequels, are the main priority for studios right now. This is obviously the reason why TV is getting better and better.
They called their project "a Stephen King book directed by Steven Spielberg that’s an homage to 1980s pop culture" and they re-developed it and packaged it as an eight-episode TV series. And guess what? The networks weren't interested! It wasn't until executive producer and director Shawn Levy got involved that it started to gain some traction. Levy said:
“You could choose to take breaks. But if you opted to watch it straight through, as many people have, we wanted it to feel of one unique piece of film that happens to be on a television screen."
It's just crazy to me that studios and networks weren't jumping all over this thing trying to outbid each other on the rights. Netflix won the game in the end, though.
Nora Felder, the music supervisor on the series, initially didn't even want to be a part of the show! But, she took the job and was faced with an issue of getting the right to The Clash's classic song, "Should I Stay Or Should I Go". That song plays a huge and integral role in the story and it took some major convincing to get the rights because they didn't want it to be used as a joke in a project chronicling “monsters from an alternative world.” Matt didn't know any of this while she explained how she had to convince The Clash to give them the rights.
She presented the featured scenes as fostering a bond between a family. The use of the song built over time, so Felder had to continuously go back and get clearances. “You don’t want anyone to think they’re trivializing your music or making fun of it,” she explained.
So, she basically had to pitch to them that the series was not about monsters and dimensions, that it was about family. Which it is! She just had to convince them of that.
In the end, I'm just happy that everything worked out. They have created an amazing series that has exploded in popularity. Now they have a second season currently in development that the fans are extremely excited about seeing. This is a series that we want to see keep going until the full story arc that the creative team set out tell is complete. I love the world, they've created, I love the characters, and I can't wait to see what happens next!
Stranger Things Season 2 will be released on October 27th.