‘Stranger Things’ Pitch: How the Duffer Brothers Sold the Show

Twins Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer are the creative minds behind Netflix’s Stranger Things. Born in 1984 in Durham, North Carolina, Matt and Ross found comfort and inspiration in all things cinema. As they came of age, they consumed every VHS tape they could get their hands on. In the third grade, their parents gifted them a Hi8 video camera, which kicked off their interest in creating films. Throughout their childhood, the Duffer Brothers—as they are known professionally—made countless home videos.

After high school, the brothers attended Chapman University in Orange, California, and graduated in 2007 from the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. To make their Hollywood dreams come true, they began to write and sell a spec script—or one they would write and submit, as a whole, for consideration.

It took years, but Matt and Ross endured the assistant-turned-director rite of passage that many writers face in Hollywood; they landed an agent and secured producers for their project Hidden, a sci-fi thriller about a family hiding in a bomb shelter from lurking monsters. While a bidding war ensued, the film never saw a theatrical release. They began developing a new project: Stranger Things, originally known as Montauk. As they worked on the series, they kept themselves afloat by writing for the television series Wayward Pines. To get Stranger Things off the ground, they had to sell it to a studio. About a dozen studios rejected the project before it landed on the desk of executives at Netflix.

A television show pitch is an informative and persuasive sell of a project. The comprehensive document includes four elements: a logline, the “elevator pitch” or short summary of the TV show; a one-sheet, which is halfway between a résumé and a condensed version of your idea; a series bible, or a rough outline of how your story will develop; and a pilot script, which is the first episode of a series.

Some pitch documents may vary in their contents, but all should give network executives or production companies reviewing the pitch an idea of the show’s core, as well as a sense of your writing style.

Stranger Things is a TV series that follows a group of school-aged friends in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s. The Netflix series had two original villains: the demogorgon and Dr. Martin Brenner. The demogorgon, inspired by the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, terrified the show’s D&D-playing protagonists (Mike Wheeler, Will Byers, Lucas Sinclair, and Dustin Henderson). In early seasons, the demogorgon originated in a parallel dimension that the characters dub the Upside Down. Dr. Martin Brenner, the manipulative director of the CIA-sanctioned MKAUltra, abused Eleven, a young girl with psychic abilities.

After more than twelve rejection meetings with other network executives, Matt and Ross landed the opportunity to pitch Netflix. They sent a lookbook, or a series of visuals to communicate your intended aesthetics, in advance and made sure to refine their original pitch. They ended up meeting with the network for roughly ten to fifteen minutes. Here’s how the brothers pitched Netflix:

• Incorporating familiar references: The Duffer Brothers wanted an easy way to explain the three different storylines that would unfold, so they used pop culture nods to make it clear. “We’re saying, ‘The adults are in a Spielberg movie; the teens are an ‘80s horror film, like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street; and the kids are in a Stephen King novel, like Stand By Me or It,’” Ross says. “There are references that we were assuming that they would be able to understand and relate to.”
• Personalizing the pitch: When they met with Netflix, they talked about their passions. “We started to talk, make it a little personal immediately and talk about why we’re passionate about this material,” Matt says. “We say, ‘When we were growing up, we were just regular kids living in the suburbs of North Carolina playing Dungeons and Dragons with our nerdy friends.’” They also described going to the movies with their dad growing up and how they fell in love with TV, particularly The Sopranos.
• Simplifying character arcs: It’s important to strike a balance when talking about characters. There were characters they loved that didn’t appear in the first season of Stranger Things, so the brothers didn’t describe them during the pitch. They also focused on the major plot points for their main adult characters. “When we go through each character, we go through Hopper,” Ross says. “We’re talking a little about who Hopper is; we’re talking about the story arc … And we’re talking about his story arc A to B. And then we’re doing the same with Joyce. We’re just hitting those huge points, so hopefully, they understand who this character [is], where they go in the story, and where they end up. You’re staying really broad. It’s a short paragraph for each of these characters. It’s a lot of information you’re packing in there, and the key, in order to do that, is to not go into too much detail.”
• Specifying without going overboard: There were a lot of details the Duffer brothers left out, including how Mike and Eleven fall in love or that Jonathan and Nancy eventually team up. “Don’t get too carried away,” Ross says. “This is fifteen to twenty minutes, so you’re gonna have to be very particular. You’re gonna have to pick your best ideas and your simple ideas. You could definitely lose people really quick if you start goin’ too deep into mythology. But you should touch on mythology. We touch on what this other dimension is. We talk about inspiration. We talk a little bit about music [and] tone. You’re sort of hitting [the] bullet points of what the show is both gonna feel like, and you’re giving a sense of what the story arcs could be.”
• Wrapping up with the strongest point: The children are at the core of Stranger Things, so the Duffer Brothers decided to leave them for last. “It was [obviously a choice] by us to end with the kids last,” Matt says. “We knew that was [probably] our most interesting storyline, so we wanted to end on a high note. That’s why we structured it in the way that we did.”

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