The live-action Stranger Things series might be over, but that’s definitely not the end of the franchise. While we wait for a potential spin-off from the Duffer Brothers, Fanboy & Chum Chum creator Eric Robles has created an animated “in-betweenquel,” Stranger Things: Tales from ’85. The show takes us back to the flagship show’s early era, before our favorite D&D lovin’ kids had their voices crack. With season one behind him and a success, we spoke with Robles about creating a new, unexplored era in the Hawkins timeline.
Note: This interview was conducted before we knew of the season two renewal for Stranger Things: Tales from ’85.
NERDIST: How did you get involved in Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, and how long was this show in development before you came on board? Was it always set between seasons 2 and 3 of the live-action series?
Eric Robles: This is my understanding. It was something that was in development for a little while before I even showed up. But the biggest challenge was that the Duffer Brothers did want this to take place between seasons two and three. Their big ask for anybody they would bring on to try to figure this out was, “It has to take place between two and three, but you cannot open up a gate.” And as much as people tried, I guess that they just weren’t figuring that out.
And at the time, I had pitched a horror series to Netflix, and we were talking about it for a while. They ended up saying, “Oh, you know what, we’re going to have to pass on it, because we have something that would compete against what you’re doing.” Because I was doing a horror series and they had Stranger Things, which I didn’t know at the time.
And then, after they said, “We’re gonna pass,” they’d call me back like two weeks later or something like that, and they were like, “Hey Robles, do you want to come check out what we got?” And I said, “Absolutely.” They told me it was Stranger Things. I’m like, oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? I would love to take a stab at this. And the challenge was to set it between 2 and 3. And that’s when I kind of went away and figured out this idea of what we can do, and how we can make this series happen.
Tales from ’85 takes place in the winter, which is a season the live-action show avoided. Probably because it’s hard to film in the snow. How do you feel the season changed the kind of story you wanted to tell?
Robles: It was exciting for us to be placed in the winter because we’re trying to clean the slate for what you expect in Hawkins. And so it just gives you a new palette to play with, which allowed us to have these great stories, which start from the first episode, which is our “snow shark,” right? I’m a huge horror fan. So Jaws obviously has a huge impact. And I was just like, “Wait a second, you have Hawkins completely covered in a sea of white snow.” So you want to have your own snow shark. And it just really allowed us to play. Like the way we have the big storm that happens in episodes 6 and 7? That’s part of an actual thing that happened in Indiana in 1985. We did our research, and there was a big winter storm that actually happened during that period.
Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 keeps the tone of the live-action show for the most part, but there are elements that feel tailor-made for animation. One of those was the pumpkin creatures in episode two. How much did you feel you needed to balance stuff we expect from the Hawkins we know with elements that only work in cartoon form?
Robles: Yeah, I think this series wasn’t meant to be this fill-in-the-blanks of the flagship series. We literally meant for it to become The Real Ghostbusters, right? And, you know, being a kid of the ’80s myself, like when The Real Ghostbuster came out, I was so excited about just having that animated series of my favorite characters, right? And so the Duffer brothers also grew up watching a lot of that stuff, and they said, “We want to just kind of create this little pocket of adventures that we can have, allowing for these things to happen.” The truth of the matter is, you know, yes, you have pumpkins, but with the science and how we put it together, technically you can make that happen even in live-action, because it’s all science-based, right?
So at the beginning of episode six, there’s a scientist who injects his formula into dead plant matter, which is Upside Down matter, and brings those to life. So the creature is made of that, and then it allows the spores to circulate throughout Hawkins. That lands in a pumpkin field. It could have landed on anything organic, and it would have brought that thing to life. The fact that it landed in those pumpkins at Eugene’s farm was very Stranger Things specific. It allows for those Demogorgon-type creatures to exist. So yes, the fact that it’s something we can do in animation and make it really extreme is super fun for us. But technically, the science behind that would also work in live-action. But because they are a lot more grounded in that world, this allows us to have fun with what we can do with the series.
You pared down the epic cast of Stranger Things to focus almost entirely on the Hawkins AV Club kids. Was there ever a consideration to include the rest of the cast in a bigger way? Or was just focusing on the kids always the plan?
Robles: You want a real inside scoop on this? Ok, you’re gonna be the first one to get this. Originally, we started writing the show to be a lot more like the live-action series, believe it or not. We had Hopper involved in the story of a missing kid, which was Jeff. He was just off the board, and that really triggered this Hopper story. And then we started splitting the stories, as the live-action show does. You have the adults’ story, with Hopper into an investigation, and the kids kind of on their own journey. And eventually it would all come back together. But then we started seeing how it became very serious and very much like the live-action show. And it just went against what we were thinking of doing originally. Something which was more like the fun adventures, with a focus on just the kid adventures themselves.
As a Latino creator, how important was it for you to include characters like Rosario? And was there a push from your end to give her a bigger role in the series?
Robles: I was looking at the cast as a whole, and being a Latino myself, that’s when I said, “You know what, why don’t we incorporate this girl Rosario to be part of the story as well.” Yes, it was a character that we could have had any ethnicity for, right? We needed an antagonist there, someone who eventually becomes infected and creates the pumpkin queen. But ultimately, when it came down to it, I just wanted to throw a little more diversity into Hawkins. Just to see who else we can put in there. So I decided to put Rosario as part of it.
This series covers the early winter of 1985. But the third season of the live-action show begins in the summer. Do you feel there’s room for another story set in the spring?
Robles: Season one of the flagship show, it doesn’t take place over a month. It’s literally like a week and a half or something like this, right? It’s not a lot of time. And if you look at our show as well, and you look at the dates, it literally is also the same, very similar timeline. And we start in January, right, which gives you technically February, March, April, May, June, until you get to July. So if you wanted to keep telling stories, even within the scope that we have, we have plenty of time to continue these stories within the timeline that we currently have.
Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, season one is now streaming on Netflix.
The post STRANGER THINGS: TALES FROM ’85 Creator Talks Hopper’s Cut Role appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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