Following the writers’ and actors’ strike in Hollywood, which the creators fully support, season 5 of Stranger Things will not begin filming until (at best) early 2024, which means that its release on Netflix should not be scheduled before 2025. Yes, at this rate, Eleven, Mike, Dustin & Co. will all be 40 years.
A season 5 of Stranger Things like cinema?
Also, in order to continue to hype the fans, Shawn Levy (executive producer and director) took advantage of a recent interview given to Total Film to provide some information on the upcoming episodes, which will be the last of the series. And unsurprisingly, the Duffer brothers’ partner was rave about future events.
The problem ? As we can discover in his comments, Shawn Levy could not help but fall into the most clichéd and infuriating statement possible, proving a real lack of respect for the very format of Stranger Things. After confiding, “We must remain in the logical continuation of season 4 and therefore extend our level and our ambition for the episodes of season 5“, so he swung, “We are in a kind of cinematic narration major, but really major, for something that is commonly considered a TV series“. And to conclude: “Stranger Things Season 5 Is As Huge As Any Of The Biggest Movies We Can See In Theaters“.
>> “In the meantime, we are closing“: season 5 of Stranger Things stopped and postponed <<
A boring and frustrating comparison
Certainly, this feeling appears at first glance as a real and rather exciting compliment, but above all it demonstrates a boring intellectual laziness. The reason ? A statement of this kind always tends to demean the format of series which would never be at the level of cinema, except in rare exceptions. An implication as frustrating as it is stupid that we regularly hear based on “this series/season is like a film cut into several parts“, which makes no sense today.
If for decades, the series industry was viewed with disdain and contempt by the cinema industry which considered it (unfairly) as less ambitious and creative, the fault of a serialized format, productions considered less inspired (the creators of Twilight Zone still laughing) and a less classy ease of access (watching a work in your living room would be less prestigious than doing it in a room) – this is why series actors have often had difficulty breaking through at the cinema at one time, blocked by a certain snobbery which closed the doors to them – the situation has greatly evolved over the last 20 years.
Whether with OZ, The Wire, Twin Peaks, breaking Bad, Six Feet Under, Game Of Thrones Or Mad Men on the drama side, or even Seinfeld, Veep, The Office Or Curb Your Enthusiasm As for comedies (to name just a few), series have been shaking up the codes for a long time and reappropriating the ways of telling stories or filming them. Also, we do not see how it would be more prestigious and important to associate with a family capable of laying dung in a manner Ant-Man 3, The Flash, Fast and Furious 10that of a family which renews itself and continually surprises us (poke Foundation, Better Call Saul, The Handmaid’s Tale…)
It is time for certain series creators to respect their format and understand that both industries have their masterpieces and their failures, their qualities and their faults, without needing to minimize one to make themselves look good on the other. .