In Hollywood’s cutthroat dealmaking ecosystem, stranger things often happen — like Matt and Ross Duffer moving from Netflix for a rich new overall deal at Paramount.
The Duffer Brothers, creators of the Netflix juggernaut “Stranger Things,” are in advanced negotiations to exclusively create film and television — with an emphasis on tentpole movies — at the legacy studio just taken over by David Ellison’s Skydance. The move would reunite the Duffers with Cindy Holland, Paramount’s new head of streaming, who greenlit “Stranger Things” at Netflix. The pair would also work with Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, who share film and series creative duties.
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Reps for the Duffers had no immediate comment. A Paramount spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment.
The Duffers do still have considerable business with Netflix through their production company Upside Down Pictures (a nod to the phantasmagoric alternate dimension that fuels the story on “Stranger Things”), run by producing partner Hilary Leavitt. They’ve completed production on two new series set to debut on the streamer in 2026: the adventure series “The Boroughs” with Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard and Alfred Molina; and the relationship horror series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” with Jennifer Jason Leigh. A preview of the upcoming animated prequel “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” screened at the 2025 Annecy Festival in June. And following the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things,” which premieres in November, the brothers are expected to mount an as-yet unannounced live action spin-off series.
Before “Stranger Things” made them household names, the Duffers’ career almost stalled before it could start, when Warner Bros. sat on their directorial debut, the post-apocalyptic thriller “Hidden,” for years after they’d made it, ultimately dumping it into the VOD market. M. Night Shyamalan, however, liked their script for the film so much that he hired them as writers on his 2015 Fox series “Wayward Pines.”
Their pilot script for what became “Stranger Things” was turned down by just about every network in the industry, until Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps came onboard and sold the show to Netflix. The first season, for which the Duffers directed six of the eight episodes, became an instant sensation when it debuted in July 2016 — the streamer’s first home-grown hit show without a name-brand creator or subject matter. The fourth season of the show became Netflix’s most-watched English language series ever when it debuted in 2022.
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