Netflix Series - Stranger Things 3 - July 4, 2019 (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

First series thread
Second series thread

Press Release:

01 December 2017​

Netflix renews Stranger Things for a third season
Netflix announced today via Twitter that Stranger Things will return to Netflix for a third season.

The series stars Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, David Harbour as Chief Jim Hopper, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Dacre Montgomery as Billy, and Sadie Sink as Max, among others.

The series is created by The Duffer Brothers, who also serve as executive producers and directors along with Shawn Levy (who also directs), Dan Cohen and Iain Patterson. Stranger Things is a Netflix production.

Stranger Things received 18 Emmy nominations this year (with five wins) and was honored with the 2017 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, as well as the 2017 Norman Felton Producer of the Year Award in Episodic Television -- Drama from the Producers Guild of America.

The series is critically acclaimed, currently Certified Fresh, with a 94% rating for both Season 1 and Season 2 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Visit Stranger Things on Netflix!

Casting (per Deadline):

• Maya Thurman-Hawke has been cast in the series regular role of Robin, "an alternative girl who is equal parts sharp and playful. Bored with her mundane day job, she just wants a little excitement in her life… and gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a dark secret in Hawkins."
  
• Priah Ferguson has been promoted from guest to recurring. Her character, Lucas's blunt and opinionated little sister Erica, "returns, only this time with an army of friends. No longer content with sitting on the sidelines, Erica finds herself on a wild mission to save Hawkins from a dangerous and unexpected new threat."
  
  

The Duffer Brothers will again serve as showrunners for Stranger Things 3. Shawn Levy continues to produce and direct.

The third series will have eight episodes, down one from the second series but right in line with the first series. The extra episode in Stranger Things 2 was used to tell a standalone story with Eleven outside of Hawkins. The episode itself, and its placement within the season, proved highly divisive with fans.

Production is set to begin next month in Georgia.

 

[Sam Favate]

Any word on whether Sadie Sink (Max) is returning? I thought she added a breath of fresh air to the show (not that it was stale, but you know what I mean).

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Any word on whether Sadie Sink (Max) is returning? I thought she added a breath of fresh air to the show (not that it was stale, but you know what I mean).

Sadie Sink is expected to return, along with: Millie Bobby Brown, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Cara Buono, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery and Dacre Montgomery.

 

[justarandomstan]

Eight episodes sounds about right. Honestly, the stand alone episode made me cringe. The whole "sister" story line was just so bland.

I read somewhere that season 3 will be The Duffers' last season as showrunners, and then they'll move to other Netflix projects.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Cary Elwes and Jake Busey join cast of Stranger Things 3

18 April 2018​

Stranger Things S3 Casting Announcement
Cary Elwes has been cast as a guest performer in the role of "Mayor Kleine and Jake Busey joins as "Bruce"

Cary Elwes has been cast as a guest performer in the role of “Mayor Kline"



Photo credit: Lisa Marie Elwes

[MAYOR KLINE] - Handsome, slick, and sleazy, Mayor Kline is your classic 80s politician -- more concerned with his own image than with the people of the small town he governs.

Cary Elwes was recently a series regular on his show THE ART OF MORE, which has wrapped its second season for Sony/Crackle. He stars in this opposite Dennis Quaid, Kate Bosworth and Christian Cooke. Elwes shot THE BILLIONAIRES BOYS CLUB opposite Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton and Kevin Spacey, and can be seen starring in the theatrical release THE QUEEN OF SPAIN, opposite Penelope Cruz for Academy Award winning director, Fernando Trueba (“Belle Epoque”);SUGAR MOUNTAIN, opposite Jason Momoa; and WE DON’T BELONG HERE, opposite Catherine Keener and Anton Yelchin.

He was recently seen in director Rob Reiner’s BEING CHARLIE, which bowed at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews. Cary produced and wrote ELVIS NIXON which starred Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon which was released by Bleeker Street.

Elwes is perhaps best known for his roles in Academy Award winning films GLORY, DAYS OF THUNDER and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, box-office hits HOT SHOTS!, TWISTER, LIAR LIAR and SAW, and the cult classics ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. He has also played popular recurring roles in Golden Globe© and Emmy Award© winning television series THE X-FILES and the highly rated comedy series PSYCH.

Other recent TV credits include Workaholics and recurring on LIFE IN PIECES. Cary was also in the critically acclaimed miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, UPRISING, THE RIVERMAN and POPE JOHN PAUL II.

Last year, Elwes released his first memoir, AS YOU WISH: INCONCEIVABLE TALES FROM THE MAKING OF THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which became a New York Times Bestseller and the paper back will be released this October.

Jake Busey has been cast as a guest performer in the role of “Bruce”



Photo credit: Dana Patrick

[BRUCE] - He’s a journalist for the The Hawkins Post with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.

Jake Busey was born, raised and is living well in show business.

The son of photographer Judy Lynn Helkenberg and actor Gary Busey, Jake spent his childhood on film sets, on the road with his father’s bands and grew up as a complete artist. Spending many years side-stage -studying such acts as Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, and Feetwood Mac, Jake found his passion for music and performing.

Busey entered the industry with a bang in his first motion picture STRAIGHT TIME (1978), starring alongside his father and Dustin Hoffman. Ever since, Jake has worked with Jodi Foster in CONTACT, Will Smith in ENEMY OF THE STATE, Michael J Fox in Peter Jackson’s THE FRIGHTENER’S, Luke Wilson and Drew Barrymore in HOME FRIES, Reese Witherspoon in S.F.W., and most memorably as the smart - mouthed Private Ace Levy in STARSHIP TROOPERS.

Most recently, Jake starred in the Shane Black / Fox feature The Predator, coming August2018. Jake recurred on Ray Donovan, is recurring on ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD anddozens of other guest spots. Busey also starred in 3 seasons of Robert Rodriguez’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.

Jake can also be seen in History Channel’s 8 hour epic mini-series TEXAS RISING alongside Thomas Jane, Bill Paxton, Ray Liotta and Jeremy Davies, directed by Roland Joffee. Busey plays Samuel Wallace, the man credited with reciting the legendary warning, “Remember the Alamo.”

A bit of a modern-day Renaissance man, Jake’s passions in life include fatherhood, acting, music, flying planes when necessary and fabricating custom motor-bicycles. What’s a motor-bicycle...? Visit thejakebike.com and you’ll find out!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 3 Now in Production:

 

[Johnny Angell]

I like the show but I was kinda wondering if some of the parents aren't giving thought to moving out of town? I mean, it's worse than Flint, Michigan.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

If this promo is any indication, it looks like they're holding Season 3 until Summer 2019, rather than the usual Halloween rollout:

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Oh boy, so Netflix is now joining the ranks of distributors making people wait two years for new TV seasons? It’s an 8 episode season! This shouldn’t be this complicated!

 

[Robert Crawford]

Oh boy, so Netflix is now joining the ranks of distributors making people wait two years for new TV seasons? It’s an 8 episode season! This shouldn’t be this complicated!

That's a reason why I'm thinking of cancelling Netflix and joining later when they have more of the programming I'm interested in seeing at one time.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

That's a reason why I'm thinking of cancelling Netflix and joining later when they have more of the programming I'm interested in seeing at one time.

Yes, I'm thinking of rotating between the services every few months.

 

[Johnny Angell]

That's a reason why I'm thinking of cancelling Netflix and joining later when they have more of the programming I'm interested in seeing at one time.

I find Netflix always have something I find interesting. I’m not saying I like these gaps in the seasons. When you’ve got growing kids, you’d think they’d want to shoot the seasons closer together. Maybe they are and they’re just stretching out the releases.

 

[Sean Bryan]

If this promo is any indication, it looks like they're holding Season 3 until Summer 2019, rather than the usual Halloween rollout:

While the Halloween debut of season 2 was quite appropriate, you can't really say it is the "usual" as season 1 hit in July.

That being said, I really like the idea of new seasons coming out around Halloween and would prefer that over a summer release.

 

[Bryan^H]

Oh boy, so Netflix is now joining the ranks of distributors making people wait two years for new TV seasons? It’s an 8 episode season! This shouldn’t be this complicated!

Thank You! Maybe I'm overly sensitive to situations like this, but it just strikes me as disorganized, and lazy. I mean why can they not release season after season in a timely, orderly fashion. What is the hold up?

---Cool trailer though.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think they are intentionally holding it in order to build demand, and with the idea that their subscribers will simply wait for additional programming rather than canceling in the interim. From everything I've read, the next season was being written, cast and shot as if they were going to make a 2018 release date.

They did something similar with the latest Arrested Development season; from what I've read, the season has been completely shot and finished, but they released only half the episodes, with the rest coming later in the year.

To me, it strikes me as being extremely disrespectful to the audience. They are asking viewers to commit their time and money to a show, and asking that viewers become emotionally invested as well. But they are not willing to make the same commitment to their audience that they ask the audience to make to them.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Thank You! Maybe I'm overly sensitive to situations like this, but it just strikes me as disorganized, and lazy. I mean why can they not release season after season in a timely, orderly fashion. What is the hold up?

---Cool trailer though.

I don't know if this is really indicating that season 3 will come out next summer (it looks like it could be hinting at that). If it is, it could be planned that way or it could be taking longer than initially thought.

While I'd like to think that the creators can produce 8 hours of story in a year, I think that isn't necessarily "easy peasy". One two hour movie often takes about a year from the start of filming to the release date. This is four times the length of your typical movie, and while it is a TV show, it's a a hell of a cinematic one.

I'd like more sooner, but I think sometimes you can't force creative stuff into an assembly-line timeline. When that is done the quality can suffer. Perhaps they just don't want to feel rushed?

There was about 15 months between the release of seasons 1 and 2. This would be even longer than that, but they haven't yet released a subsequent season within one year.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

To quote the writer/director Nicholas Meyer (who was probably ripping this off from someone else as well), I believe art thrives on limitations.

When showrunners have deadlines, they have to think about things that otherwise might not occur to them, and often the best work comes from having to solve more problems in less time.

Almost every favorite work of art of mine, whether it was a book, a movie, a TV show or an album, faded a deadline which caused its creator to have to think outside the box, and come up with something better than they had initially planned.

Take those limitations away, and the final product is almost always less interesting.

As a recent example, look at the huge difference between seasons 1 and 2 of HBO’s Westworld. On the first season, the production was run closer to that of a traditional show. It was a densely layered, rich tapestry of a season which ended up being well received by critics and audience members alike. For the second season, the showrunners were allowed to make the show in a way that afforded them much more freedom and far less pressure from deadlines. Just about everyone agrees that the second season is clearly inferior to the first. I would argue that this is almost certainly the result of being freed from the limitations that would have challenged the showrunners. Season two has all of these lofty ideas but in the end, is far less than the sum of its parts.

Giving the Stranger Things showrunners extra time to produce less content isn’t likely to result in better content. It’s more likely to result in content that’s more ponderous and drawn out. It seems more likely that there will be less of the things viewers liked most about the previous seasons and more of what viewers didn’t like. As was the case with Westworld.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That’s assuming that the delay is because the showrunners are being granted extra time.

But if the shows are being produced to meet a similar date to the previous season, but Netflix is just holding them back (as they’re currently doing with Arrested Development), then that’s just greed and disrespect for their paying customers.

 

[Malcolm R]

It may also be related to cast schedules. Some of them are fairly busy and not just sitting around waiting for ST to begin filming again.

I'm not sure what commitments Finn Wolfhard has to IT: Chapter 2, but that may also be a factor. He's also currently working on the animated Addams Family film (he's the voice of Pugsley).

Millie Bobby Brown is involved in the Godzilla/Kong sequels.

Charlie Heaton is filming The New Mutants.

Noah Schnapp also has multiple projects moving forward.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The third season is currently shooting, and they pretty much have to shoot a season a year because otherwise the kids will be adults before they're finished. The only thing I can think of (besides Josh's more cynical but perfectly plausible explanations) is that the visual effects requirements for this season are more significant than for past seasons, so they need a longer post-production than the first two seasons.