Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ to Open on Broadway in Spring 2025
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is coming to Broadway in the spring.
The play, which is set up as a prequel to the events of the Netflix series, will start previews at the Marquis Theatre on March 28, 2025, with an opening night on April 2025. Netflix and Sonia Friedman Productions are producing. The show premiered in London’s West End in December 2023, where it is still running.
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Written by Kate Trefry, the play includes younger versions of the characters from the television series, including Winona Ryder’s Joyce, Sean Astin’s Bob Newby and David Harbour’s Hopper.
The production sums up the plot, saying: “Before the world turned upside down. Hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. Young Jim Hopper’s car won’t start, Bob Newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and Joyce Maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. When new student Henry Creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy … and the shadows of the past have a very long reach.”
The Duffer brothers, who created the series, are credited with the original story for the play, in addition to Trefry and Jack Thorne, who wrote the stage adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Shawn Levy, executive producer of Stranger Things, and Dan Cohen of Levy’s company 21 Laps, are associate producers on the show.
Stephen Daldry, who also directed The Inheritance on Broadway and worked as an executive producer on Netflix’s The Crown, co-directs the production with Justin Martin (who directed Jodie Comer in Prima Facie in the West End). Casting for the Broadway run will be announced at a later date.
The West End production of Stranger Things: The First Shadow was generally well-reviewed, with particular praise for its stage effects, and won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new entertainment or comedy play award, as well as the Olivier for best set design.
Netflix made its foray into Broadway producing last season, with the play Patriots. That play, which was written by Peter Morgan, creator of The Crown, opened April 22 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and closed June 23, with plans to develop a screen adaptation of the stage play.
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