When Stranger Things closed the gate on New Year’s Eve, it ended more than a series. It ended a ten-year creative marriage between Netflix and the Stranger Things creators, twins Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer. Two questions have trailed the brothers ever since. The first is what they do next. The second is what happened to the other big Netflix genre series carrying their name — the one that arrived with a superstar cast, glowing reviews and Stephen King’s blessing, and was gone after a single season. Both questions now have answers.
The Stranger Things creators’ next act is a movie
The Duffers are no longer Netflix filmmakers. Their four-year exclusive deal with Paramount — spanning film, television and streaming — was announced in August 2025 and took effect in April, when their Netflix contract expired. The reason was not money or bad blood. It was the one thing Netflix does not really do: a theatrical release. Matt Duffer told Variety that the biggest draw was the chance to do something theatrical. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter this fall, said the brothers “did not want to make more TV shows right now” after a decade at the company and wanted to make big theatrical films instead. Sarandos says he encouraged them: “Don’t wake up when you’re 60 wishing you did that 20 years later.”
Their first Paramount project is already dated. The brothers will write and direct an untitled event film for the studio, plot locked down tight, set for a wide theatrical release on November 3, 2028. It is a genuine career pivot — the Duffers’ only previous feature is Hidden, the 2015 shelter thriller, and the Paramount slate reunites them with executives Cindy Holland and Matt Thunell, the Netflix team that originally championed Stranger Things and now runs Paramount’s direct-to-consumer and television operations.
Leaving did not mean surrendering Hawkins. The animated spinoff Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, executive produced by the Duffers, premiered April 23 and has already been renewed for a second season. A live-action Stranger Things spinoff remains in development at Netflix, and both Sarandos and the brothers have said they will stay involved in the franchise they built.
Shawn Levy left for a galaxy far, far away
If the Duffers built Stranger Things, Shawn Levy was its other directing engine — an executive producer through his 21 Laps banner who directed episodes in all five seasons, including co-directing the penultimate chapter, “The Bridge,” with the brothers. He has scattered in a different direction: a new overall deal with Disney’s 20th Television, and a finishing sprint on Star Wars: Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling film he is directing for release on May 28, 2027. Sarandos has publicly predicted Levy will be making Star Wars movies for a while — that is the Netflix chief’s expectation, not a confirmed Lucasfilm slate. The old relationship is not dead, either: Netflix still has projects in development with Levy, including a hockey drama titled Sticks.
Frank Darabont’s encore has no sequel — yet
The final season’s most romantic directing story belongs to Frank Darabont. The director of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist had not directed anything since a 2013 episode of Mob City, and was happily retired when Dan Trachtenberg had to drop out of the season over his Predator: Badlands schedule. The Duffers — lifelong Darabont fans who had engineered a friendly meeting through their agents — offered him the episodes, and after a week of thought he came out of retirement to direct Chapter Three, “The Turnbow Trap,” and Chapter Five, “Shock Jock.” As for what Darabont does next: honestly, nothing is announced. He has spoken warmly about loving retirement and treated Stranger Things as a special one-off. Unless another script tempts him the way Hawkins did, the encore may stand alone.
So why did The Boroughs die after one season?
Start with whose show it actually was. The Boroughs — pitched, inevitably, as Stranger Things with senior citizens — was created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, the team behind The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. The Duffers were executive producers through their Upside Down Pictures banner, alongside Hilary Leavitt; they did not create or run it. The series premiered May 21 with all eight episodes, following the residents of a New Mexico retirement community who discover something alien in the desert, and it was stacked with beloved veterans: Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters and Bill Pullman. Critics were kind — the series scored around 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — and Stephen King called it a masterpiece.
The audience, though, did not match the budget. Per Netflix’s reported weekly figures as covered by Deadline, The Boroughs drew 5.6 million views in its opening weekend and 9.5 million in its first full week — enough to top the streamer’s chart for the week of May 25–31 — before falling to 3.7 million the following week. Against that slide sat a reported cost of more than $10 million per episode, driven by visual effects and that A-list cast. This was not a show designed to burn off: Addiss and Matthews had mapped a three-season arc, a writers’ room for season two had already opened, and at one point filming seasons two and three back-to-back was discussed. None of it mattered. On June 17 — less than a month after launch — Netflix confirmed there would be no second season.
Netflix’s public explanation has been deliberately unspecific. Jinny Howe, the streamer’s head of UCAN scripted series, told Deadline that “a lot of different factors” weighed into the decision, and stressed that the company remains “really, really proud of that show.” Behind the platitudes, the reported math is simple: respectable numbers, championship-level costs, and a completion curve that never justified season two. Netflix has flatly denied the tin-foil theory that the show was punished because the Duffers left for Paramount — the brothers were, after all, only marginally attached as executive producers, and Netflix kept working with them on other projects. Cast members were caught off guard; Geena Davis publicly called Netflix out over the decision, saying it surprised everyone given the show’s respectable numbers.
One distinction matters for the record. The Duffers’ other 2026 Netflix launch, the wedding-set horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — created by Haley Z. Boston, with the brothers as executive producers — also ran a single season, but it was not canceled. Netflix classifies it as a limited series: one and done by design, a different fate than The Boroughs’ unfinished three-season plan.
More from our Stranger Things package: Stranger Things Cast Members in Real-Life Bands and Stranger Things Cast: Where They Are Now in 2026.
The 247 Take — The Boroughs was not killed by a feud, a flop cast or a bad show. It was killed by the coldest equation in streaming: prestige reviews divided by blockbuster costs, multiplied by an audience that sampled, smiled and wandered off. The Duffers understood the math before anyone — which is exactly why their next swing is a movie with a release date, in a theater, where an opening weekend still gets to be an event.
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Sources: Deadline via Female First (Jinny Howe’s “so many factors” comments to Deadline; Deadline’s reporting that Netflix decided not to continue The Boroughs despite renewal talks, an opened season-two writers’ room and back-to-back filming discussions; the series’ positive reviews against modest ratings and a sizeable budget) | CBR (The Boroughs as an eight-part series created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews and executive produced in part by the Duffer Brothers; Stephen King’s “10/10 masterpiece” praise; Netflix’s position that the cancellation came down to economics — the show did not crack the numbers needed to justify a reported cost of upwards of $10 million per episode — and its denial that the Duffers’ Paramount move played any part) | CBR (the May 21 premiere of all eight episodes; cancellation revealed less than a month later; Geena Davis calling out Netflix and saying the decision took everyone by surprise) | TVmaze (the cancellation after one season; the reported viewing slide from 5.6 million opening-weekend views to 9.5 million in the first full week and 3.7 million the next; Netflix treating Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen as a limited series that will not continue) | Film Daily (the roughly 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval; Netflix’s June 17, 2026 confirmation; the creators’ three-season arc, with Addiss saying they knew the final shot of the finale before cameras rolled; a season-two writers’ room in early development when the plug was pulled) | Parade (Sarandos’ Hollywood Reporter interview: the Duffers did not want to make more TV right now and wanted large theatrical films; the August 2025 four-year Paramount deal taking effect after their Netflix contract expired in April; Tales From ’85 and a live-action spinoff in the plans; Levy’s Disney/20th Television move, Star Wars: Starfighter due May 28, 2027, and the Sticks hockey drama still in development at Netflix) | CBR (Paramount’s November 3, 2028 date for the Duffers’ untitled event film, which they will write and direct; Tales From ’85 premiering April 23 with a season-two order already in place; Hidden as their previous feature) | SYFY (Darabont directing “The Turnbow Trap” and “Shock Jock”; Levy directing “Escape from Camazotz” and co-directing “The Bridge” with the Duffers; the New Year’s Eve finale) | Bleeding Cool (Darabont coming out of a retirement that began after 2013’s Mob City; Dan Trachtenberg’s exit over Predator: Badlands; Darabont’s Variety comments on the experience and on loving retirement)
