Demogorgons are shaking.
Olivier Award-winning play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which has already enjoyed a successful UK run, is coming to Broadway in 2025, officially opening on April 22, 2025.
A prequel of sorts, here’s the official show description: “Before the world turned upside down. Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy…and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.”
Written by Kate Trefry, with an original story by “Stranger Things” creators The Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne & Trefry, the show originally opened in London in 2023. Much like in “Harry Potter” spinoff play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” (also co-created by Jack Thorne) the special effects in “Stranger Things” will take center stage.
The play, which is set 25 years before the Netflix series, will be co-directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.
Reviewing the London production, the New York Times wrote, “[It] brings a high-octane, TV-movie sensibility to the stage, pummeling the audience with horror-show frights and sensory overload: eerie smoke effects, mind-boggling levitations, scary vocal distortions reminiscent of “The Exorcist” and noise — so much noise. … It’s a gaudy, vertiginous fairground ride of a play, exactly what you’d expect from a show co-produced by Netflix: Cheap thrills, expensively made. … “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” achieves what it sets out to do, and die-hard fans will surely lap it up.” (UK critics were kinder, as is the standard way of things.)
In other “Stranger Things” news, the fifth and final season of the Netflix smash is set to likely debut in 2025. Guest starring Linda Hamilton alongside returning stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Sadie Sink, and more, the Duffer Brothers noted it will be an emotional send-off to the series. “[For] two hours, we pitched the full season to Netflix. We did get our executives to cry, which I thought was a good sign,” Matt Duffer said during a Netflix SAG FYC event. “The only other time I’ve seen them cry is like, budget meetings.”
Tickets for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” on Broadway will go on sale in September.
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