The actors’ strike is officially over — and the team behind Netflix’s Stranger Things Season 5 isn’t wasting any time getting back to work. Production for the anticipated final season could resume as early as next week, according to one of the show’s stars.
David Harbour, who plays fan-favorite police chief Jim Hopper, expressed excitement and a sense of urgency to get back to work, according to Variety. Most importantly, he shared that production for Season 5 could resume in just “a couple of days.”
“I mean, we got to film that last season of Stranger Things, don’t we?” he told the site on the red carpet for the BoxLunch Gala honoring Feeding America. “I got to be down there, like, in a couple of days. We got to get going — we’re late.”
The popular Duffer Brothers’ series halted filming for the fifth season of the sci-fi thriller back in May because of the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike, which occurred two months before SAG-AFTRA decided to picket for similar demands.
“Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins,” the twin brothers explained in a tweet at the time. “While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out. #wgastrong.”
After four months, the WGA came to an agreement with studios and the writers’ strike officially ended on Sept. 27, 2023. On the very same day, the Stranger Things writers’ room posted, “We’re back,” on X (formerly Twitter).
When will Stranger Things Season 5 come out?
So, with the strike over, when is the earliest Season 5 of Stranger Things come out? Even if production resumes this week, most of the season will still need to be filmed in 2024. A release date in 2025 is looking more likely due to the delays, but neither the Stranger Things writers nor Netflix have confirmed a premiere date.
The writers started working on Season 5 on Aug. 2, 2022 — one month after Season 4, Volume 2 was released on Netflix. They shared the beginning their grid stage of writing each episode, eventually completing that grid on Sept. 20, 2022.
They posted the opening lines of Season 5 on Stranger Things day, which is observed every year Nov. 6. We also learned that the first episode is called “The Crawl.”
On Nov. 8, the actors’ union reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios that would end the nearly four-month strike that halted the work of thousands of entertainment workers and delayed numerous TV and film projects.
Once the board signs off on the tentative deal, the 160,000-member actors guild will have to vote to ratify the new agreement. Deadline reported “casts and crews started receiving notifications for tentative start dates in late November and early December” once the news was announced.
Read the full article here