Duffer Brothers Launch Upside Down Pictures to Produce ‘Stranger Things’ Spin-off, Stage Play, and More for Netflix

Stranger Things co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer have just announced they are launching Upside Down Pictures, a new production company that will double down on the brothers’ relationship with Netflix. Deadline reports that the Duffer Brothers have tapped BBC and MRC vet Hillary Leavitt — who helped develop shows like Ozark, Orphan Black, and The Great — to run Upside Down Pictures. The team already has a ton of major projects in the works at Netflix including the aforementioned Stranger Things spin-off, a Stephen King adaptation with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, a live action TV version of hit manga series Death Note, and even a Stephen Daldry-directed stage version of Stranger Things.

The Duffer brothers revealed in a recent Netflix press release that they want Upside Down Pictures to “aim to create the kind of stories that inspired [them] growing up – stories that take place at that beautiful crossroads where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, where big spectacle co-exists with intimate character work, where heart wins out over cynicism.”

Even though it’s been reported that the Duffers are taking some time off before they dive into writing the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, they’ve already lined up a bunch of new projects that will fall under Upside Down Pictures. According to Deadline, these include a live action television adaptation of Death Note (which is weird since Netflix already tried a live action film version), an original series from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance alums Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, and a previously announced adaptation of Stephen King’s The Talisman, which was created by Stranger Things writer Curtis Gwinn and is being co-produced by Steven Spielberg. There’s also a “new stage play set within the world and mythology of Stranger Things, produced by prolific UK-based stage producer Sonia Friedman, Stephen Daldry and Netflix” and the mysterious Stranger Things spin-off series that the Duffers claim only Finn Wolfhard has figured out the concept behind. 

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The Duffer brothers were relative newbies to the television world when they initially sold Stranger Things to Netflix. Before Stranger Things, they had been strictly film guys, co-directing a couple of shorts and the film, Hidden. In a recent interview with Variety’s Kate Aurthur, they explained that while they were pitching studios, they kept hearing that what the powers that be were really interested in were series. The brothers got a writing gig on M. Night Shyamalan’s Wayward Pines and used that experience to adapt a film idea into what would become Stranger Things. 

Today, Stranger Things is officially the all-time most popular English language Netflix television original. The series is the very definition of a tent-pole for the company. So it makes total sense that Netflix would want to double down with the Duffer brothers. What’s yet to be clear is if the wunderkinds can duplicate the monster success of Stranger Things again or if it was a lightning in a bottle moment. One promising sign is that the Duffers are entrusting the day-to-day, overall operations of Upside Down Pictures to the more-than-qualified Hillary Leavitt. According to a statement given by the Duffers, the brothers and Leavitt bonded over their shared love of films like “Jaws, Home Alone, and Speed.” So while the Duffers take care of Stranger Things‘s big finale, Leavitt will be working on the other projects in development.

No matter what, though, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and her friends still have to take on Vecna, and the Duffer brothers are going to stick with Netflix.