Netflix Orders Stranger Things Prequel 'Other Worlds,' Set in 1955 Nevada, for 2028

Netflix is taking Stranger Things back to the 1950s. The company announced on Friday a new live-action prequel series, Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure, set in the fictional desert town of Marion, Nevada in 1955 and scheduled to premiere in 2028.

The announcement landed on Stranger Things Day, marked every Nov. 6 because Nov. 6, 1983 is the date Will Byers vanished in the original series. A short teaser released with the news shows an abandoned bicycle outside a restricted area at night and a radio on the bike playing "Sh-Boom" by The Chords. A title card then reads "April 19, 1955, Marion, Nevada" before thunder splits a cloudy sky.

The team behind it

The series is co-created by Matt and Ross Duffer, who created Stranger Things, and Kate Trefry, a writer on the original show since its second season and the writer of the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Trefry will run the show and serve as writer and executive producer. Joe Wright, the director of Atonement, Darkest Hour and Pride & Prejudice, will direct the first three episodes.

Shawn Levy will executive produce through his company 21 Laps, alongside Paul Dichter, Shelley Meals, Andrea Sperling and Pavlina Hatoupis, and the Duffers will executive produce through Upside Down Pictures. Filming is set to take place in New Mexico. No cast has been announced, and Netflix gave no plot details beyond the time and the place.

"We have been dreaming of Other Worlds: A Stranger Things Adventure for many years now, and to see it become a reality is surreal and exhilarating," the Duffer Brothers said in a statement. "It is Stranger Things, but also thrillingly fresh, with a new setting, new heroes and villains." They said casting comes next.

Jinny Howe, the Netflix head of scripted series for the US and Canada, said the new series "takes us to the 1950s with new heroes and all the heart, mystery and spectacle of the original series."

Where it fits in the story

Other Worlds is set before both the original series and The First Shadow, the Tony Award winning stage play about Henry Creel that is set in 1959. Trefry said the team had the time of their lives returning to the horror, wonder and mystery of the original while telling a wholly new story. "There are so many more mysteries to explore. Welcome to Other Worlds," she said.

A franchise that keeps growing

Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in 2016 and ran for five seasons. Netflix says the first four seasons drew more than 1.2 billion views, and the fifth and final season gave the company its biggest English-language premiere week. The franchise has already grown past the main show, with the animated series Stranger Things: Tales From '85 and the stage play. Other Worlds adds a live-action prequel set three decades before the events in Hawkins, and it is due in 2028.