A stage adaptation of Stranger Things is coming to the UK later this year, and producers have revealed it will be a prequel to the series. Set more than 20 years before the events of Netflix’s hit sci-fi drama, London’s West End production of Stranger Things: The First Shadow will follow existing characters Jim Hopper, Bob Newby and Henry Creel when they were younger.
The play is written by Stranger Things writer and co-executive producer Kate Trefry and directed by The Crown’s Stephen Daldry, with co-director Prima Facie’s Justin Martin. On Wednesday (March 1), the producers said the new story will open in 1959 in Hawkins as a young Hopper’s car fails to start, Newby’s sister does not take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado tries to graduate and leave.
Teasing the play, the producers said new student Creel arrives in Hawkins, and his family find “a fresh start isn’t so easy and the shadows of the past have a very long reach,” as the beginning of Stranger Things “may hold the key to the end”. Matt and Ross Duffer, who are the creators, directors and executive producers of the Netflix series, said: “You will meet endearing new characters, as well as very familiar ones, on a journey into the past that sets the groundwork for the future of Stranger Things.
