The anthology series format is quickly gaining popularity and it’s easy to see why. The limited nature of each season allows writers to create compelling narratives, without worry about stretching the story across multiple seasons. If the concept is broad enough, it allows showrunners to pivot to completely different stories and tones from season to season, which makes it both exciting for creatives and audiences.
Thus far, the anthology format has most popularly been used for genre fare like “American Horror Story” and “American Crime Story,” but there have been some bolder ideas that haven’t taken root. For example, Bryan Fuller originally wanted the upcoming “Star Trek: Discovery” to have an anthology format, allowing him to jump into the Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard eras, but also move beyond them as well. As it turns out, one of the biggest shows on the small screen was also originally conceived in the same manner.
Speaking with ScreenRant, The Duffer Brothers reveal that when they originally went to Netflix, they had a different vision for “Stranger Things.”
“There is some truth [that we pitched it as an anthology series],” they said. “….we looked at Stephen King’s ‘It‘ and we liked that time jump that they made so we kind of pitched that as a way and then Netflix was really interested in it as a series. Because rightfully so! They were like, ‘I think people are going to fall in love with these kids. We are going to invest so much time with them, we’re going to want to continue our journey with them.’ And they were right. Once we started building a writers room and working on the show, we started to develop it and plan a multiple season arc.”
If there’s one element from their original concept that the Duffers retained, it’s the time jump, with season two of “Stranger Things” taking place a full year after the events of the first season. Granted, it’s not a leap, but it’s still a significant enough shift.
“Stranger Things” returns on October 27th.