Netflix has ordered a live-action Stranger Things prequel, Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, which will take the franchise back to the 1950s when it premieres in 2028.
The series unfolds before the events of the original show and of the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which follows a young Henry Creel in Hawkins in 1959.
An announcement teaser places the new story in the fictional town of Marion, Nevada, with a title card dated April 19, 1955.
Netflix timed the news to Stranger Things Day, Nov. 6, the annual celebration of the date Will Byers disappeared in the original show's first season.
Kate Trefry, who wrote The First Shadow, co-created the series with Matt and Ross Duffer and will serve as showrunner and executive producer. The Duffers said Trefry has worked alongside them since the show's second season.
Joe Wright, the director of Atonement, Pride & Prejudice and Darkest Hour, will direct the first three episodes and serve as an executive producer. Shawn Levy of 21 Laps will also produce, and the show will film in New Mexico.
The Duffers are producing through their Upside Down Pictures banner as a carve-out of their overall deal at Paramount. They moved to that studio for movies, television and streaming after their Netflix overall deal expired in April 2026.
Plot details remain scarce. The Duffers had previously teased that a spinoff would explore events before Henry Creel was exposed to the otherworldly substance that gave him his powers.
The teaser plays a 1950s doo-wop song from a radio on an abandoned bicycle, then pans past a restricted-area sign to a sky that splits open with a boom. The creators said casting comes next.
It's Stranger Things, but also thrillingly fresh, with a new setting, new heroes and villains, and new … actually, we're not allowed to say any more.
Matt and Ross Duffer, Stranger Things creators
The original series debuted in 2016, drew more than 1.2 billion views across its first four seasons and ended in 2025. Its fifth and final season delivered Netflix's biggest English-language premiere week.
Other Worlds becomes the fourth project in the franchise, which also includes the animated series Stranger Things: Tales from '85, whose second season arrived in September. Word of a live-action spinoff first surfaced in 2022.
The Tony Award-winning First Shadow will close on London's West End on Dec. 27 and on Broadway on Jan. 3.
