Stranger Things fans received an exciting update on the highly anticipated fifth season.
Co-creator Ross Duffer took to his Instagram on Wednesday to reveal that the hit Netflix show’s final season had reached the halfway mark in production.
Alongside a behind-the-scenes photo of the cast and crew, Duffer wrote: ‘Week 24. Happy halfway to the best cast and crew ever.’
The post also featured a video showing Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, dropping a marble into a jar to track their progress on the show’s production days.
Speculations among followers hinted that with production now halfway completed, Stranger Things season five might potentially premiere as early as January 2025.
Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer took to his Instagram on Wednesday to reveal that mega hit Netflix sci-fi show’s final season had reached the halfway mark in production; (pictured 2017)
Alongside a behind-the-scenes photo of the cast and crew, Duffer wrote: ‘Week 24. Happy halfway to the best cast and crew ever’
The final season reunites the beloved cast, including Finn Gaten Matarazzo, Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Caleb McLaughlin and Maya Hawke.
Hawke also recently commented on the timeline for completing the show.
‘Our showrunners, Matt and Ross [Duffer], take a lot of responsibility. They’re very intense about the quality of the continued writing,’ she said last week on Podcrush podcast.
‘It takes a long time to write each season, and it takes a long time to shoot them – we’re basically making eight movies. The episodes are very long.’
Previously, season five was set to begin production in 2023 before plans were abruptly halted due to the WGA strike, which began on May 2.
Scripts had already been finalized by then, but the Duffer brothers opted to postpone production as they wanted writers on set while filming.
Then, production was further delayed by the actors strike.
From July 14 to November 9, 2023, the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA was on strike over a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The writer’s strike lasted from from May 2 to September 27, 2023.
The post also featured a video showing Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, dropping a marble into a jar to track their progress on the show’s production days
Speculations among followers hinted that with production now halfway completed, Stranger Things Season 5 might potentially premiere as early as January 2025
On November 8, SAG-AFTRA and the studios reached a tentative agreement to end the strike on midnight of that day.
David Harbour told People about how he received a call the day after the strike ended, telling him production would be underway imminently.
‘They literally called me…10 minutes after the SAG thing on Twitter,’ he explained.
‘The first [assistant director] is like, “So, get the flight for you on Monday, right? We’ll be acting in Atlanta”,’ he recalled.
Earlier this year, Brown — the 19-year-old star whose claim to fame began when she started portraying Eleven at age 12 — admitted she is ready for Stranger Things to end.
She sparked ire after suggesting the show has ‘prevented’ her from working on projects she is ‘passionate’ about.
After saying that she is ready to say ‘goodbye’ and ‘get out’, insiders told DailyMail.com exclusively that crew members have been left ‘disappointed’ with her lack of ‘respect’ for the series that has ‘made for career’.
Despite it all, the source said that the crew ‘all love her’.
Millie Bobby Brown has given Stranger Things fans a hint of what’s to come in the upcoming fifth season of the hit Netflix show and promised an ‘unbelievable’ storyline
After the strikes ended, David Harbour – who plays beloved police chief Jim Hopper – said the cast and crew would be working ‘hard and fast’ to get the show back on screens
Season five was set to begin production earlier this year before plans were abruptly halted due to the WGA strike, which began on May 2. Pictured: Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven
‘These comments won’t put a bad taste in their mouths for too long, because by the time they start filming and finish the show, this will be long in the rearview,’ the insider noted.
The first season of Stranger Things premiered in July 2016 with the second being released the following year in October 2017.
The third season premiered on Netflix in July 2019 while the fourth was released in May 2022.
Not much has been revealed about the fifth and final season, but it has been revealed that the first episode is titled The Crawl.