The Upside Down just got a whole lot bigger than Hawkins, Indiana. On Wednesday, July 6, the Duffer brothers announced their new production shingle — film-industry slang for a small company inside a large company — Upside Down Pictures, as part of their overall deal with Netflix, in a Deadline exclusive. The announcement comes on the heels of the release of Stranger Things’ record-breaking fourth season, which had the biggest premiere ever for an English-language TV show on Netflix. While the duo wrap up the final season of Stranger Things, they’re hard at work on their upcoming slate of projects. What’s on the docket, you may ask? Well, there’s two Stranger Things spinoffs: the first being a stage play set in the sci-fi universe, produced by famed British theater vets Sonia Friedman and Stephen Daldry, with an assist from Netflix, of course; the second is a TV spinoff based on a pitch from the Duffers themselves.
The brothers will also venture outside the world of Demogorgons and Mind Flayers with their TV adaptations of the hit manga Death Note — its second adaptation — and the 1984 novel The Talisman. The latter project is more fantasy-horror and less sci-fi and is set in an alternate world in which a young man must find a talisman to save his mom’s life. Finally, Upside Down Pictures is developing some original IP: Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance) are working on an unannounced new series. This would be an irresponsible narrative choice, but manifesting a Stranger Things–Death Note crossover episode … Gotta see who’s beating whom in a fight.