Duffer Brothers’ First Film: From Dream Job to Studio Nightmare
Before Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers faced chaos and stress making their debut film The Hidden, which, despite good reviews, barely saw release and left them at odds with studio execs.
Long before Stranger Things became a household name, Matt and Ross Duffer found themselves in the thick of a wild ride making their first feature for Warner Bros. Over the last couple of decades, telly has well and truly taken over as the go-to for deep, layered stories, leaving cinemas mostly for the big, flashy blockbusters. These days, the sort of clever, character-driven flicks that once cleaned up at awards shows are more likely to pop up as TV series like Succession or Severance. Stranger Things is a prime example, drawing in massive crowds and building a world that’s got punters hooked.
Much of the credit for that goes to the Duffer brothers, whose knack for worldbuilding has helped the show smash records for Netflix. But before all that, the pair were, in their own words, “a little delusional” when they set out to make their first film a decade earlier.
Thrown in the Deep End
In a chat with The LAist, the brothers shared how they penned the script for The Hidden while still at uni, eventually selling it to Warner Bros.
“It sold in this dream scenario for someone recently out of college,”
Ross recalled.
“There was a bidding war between studios, and it felt like we suddenly went from being unemployed to being in Entourage or something. It felt like this amazing dream come true.”
The Hidden is set after a catastrophic outbreak in the US, following a family—played by Alexander Skarsgård, Andrea Riseborough, and Emily Alyn Lind—on their search for safety.
Landing a studio gig at 26 sounded like a dream, but Matt admitted the reality was far from rosy.
“Studio executives yelling”
at them became the norm, and the stress piled on. Ross agreed, saying,
“It was unbelievable to us at the time, and then that ended up going from a dream experience to crashing and burning.”
The pair had spent their lives gearing up for this, but suddenly, they weren’t sure what to do next.
Positive Reviews, Barely Released
Despite the chaos, The Hidden actually got a decent reception from critics. The trouble was, hardly anyone got to see it. The film was barely released, leaving the brothers feeling a bit lost. Matt described them as
“a little delusional,”
admitting they
“had no other skills.”
Ross even joked they were worried they
“couldn’t even get a job at Starbucks.”
But just a year later, Stranger Things would change everything for them.
Back to the Big Screen
While Stranger Things has become a cultural juggernaut, the Duffers haven’t given up on films. They’ve recently inked a deal with Paramount Pictures to make new projects with guaranteed cinema runs—something Netflix couldn’t offer. Here’s hoping their next go at the big screen is a bit less stressful than their first.