‘Stranger Things’ Animated Spinoff Series Greenlit By Netflix

Stranger Things is about to get a whole lot more animated. As officially confirmed by Netflix today, the streamer is spinning off its flagship series into an animated series.

While details are slim — for example, we don’t know the premiere date, the title of the show, the plot, or even what the animation style will look like — we know that it comes from Flying Bark Productions and Executive Producer Eric Robles. We also know that Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers are on board, making this the first officially announced spin-off of Stranger Things on Netflix.

“We’ve always dreamed of an animated Stranger Things in the vein of the Saturday morning cartoons that we grew up loving, and to see this dream realized has been absolutely thrilling,” The Duffer Brothers said simultaneously like those creepy twins from The Shining in a statement provided to Decider by Netflix. “We couldn’t be more blown away by what Eric Robles and his team have come up with — the scripts and artwork are incredible, and we can’t wait to share more with you! The adventure continues…”

This actually isn’t the first time the world of Stranger Things has been animated. As part of the Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales mobile game, short animated segments were released featuring the characters from Hawkins embarking on a new adventure.

While this show is almost definitely not a spin-off of the game, this does sound like a different project (potentially) than the Stranger Things: Tokyo anime previously reported on by What’s on Netflix. That show, which the site said was in the works since 2021, was described as a six-episode series with the following logline: “An encounter with the Upside Down evolves into a grand adventure for video game-loving twin brothers living on the outskirts of 1980s Tokyo.”

Unless the Duffer Brothers grew up watching anime on Saturday mornings (again, a possibility!), the style they’re teasing seems more in the vein of ’80s-inflected toons like Thundercats and He-Man, something that would be consistent with the setting of Stranger Things. For Robles’s part, he’s best known as the co-creator of Glitch Techs for Nickelodeon and Netflix, and the creator of Fanboy & Chum Chum for Nickelodeon.

The Stranger Things animated series is Executive Produced by The Duffer Brothers on behalf of Upside Down Pictures, Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen on behalf of 21 Laps, and Eric Robles on behalf of Flying Bark Productions.