‘Stranger Things’ has cast a spell on metro Atlanta for a decade
During the summer of 2016, metro Atlanta was a busy hive of TV and film production activity, benefiting from the last gasp of cable dominance.
The biggest basic cable show was AMC’s monster hit “The Walking Dead,” based out of Senoia. FX’s genre-twisting, award-winning “Atlanta” was weeks from its debut. And Tyler Perry was still working with OWN, bringing millions of fans to his soap “The Haves and the Have Nots.”
But streaming was about to eat cable’s lunch, inexorably changing the way people consume media. And Netflix was ready to take charge, fishing around for original ideas to hook its growing subscriber base. The streaming service took a chance on unknown twin brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, who had a concept that became “Stranger Things.”
Nearly a decade later, the series returns for its fifth and final season with eight episodes spread over three release dates: Wednesday, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. It’s such a big deal, the final episode will screen in 350 movie theaters nationwide Dec. 31-Jan. 1.
An ensemble science fiction homage to 1980s films such as “The Goonies” and “Stand By Me,” “Stranger Things” is about a group of suburban kids grappling with horrific creatures from an alternate dimension dubbed the Upside Down.
The series was originally set in Montauk, Long Island. But neither Montauk nor Wilmington, North Carolina, also a candidate for the show, looked remotely like the ‘80s anymore.
“As much as we liked the waterfront setting, we also liked the idea of it being Everywhere USA,” Matt Duffer said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We grew up in North Carolina in the suburbs. The show pays tribute to our childhood. When we scouted Atlanta, the woods felt the same, the houses felt the same. It just made sense to be our Everywhere USA town. That’s how Hawkins was born.”
They chose to make Hawkins a fictional town in Indiana instead of the South for one reason: “We cannot stand when actors fake Southern accents,” Ross said. “Very few can do it well.”
‘A grand slam’
A decade ago, studio space in Georgia was hard to find. Netflix didn’t want to be locked out so it signed a five-year deal with EUE/Screen Gems by Lakewood Amphitheatre near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. That became the home base for interiors of “Stranger Things” for the next decade.
“I’ve worked with ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘One Tree Hill,’” said Chris Cooney, former chief executive officer at EUE/Screen Gems, which was purchased by Cinespace Studios in 2023. “Those were home runs. ‘Stranger Things’ was a grand slam. They were great tenants. And the show really did bring a patina of success to what you can do in Atlanta.”
The Duffer brothers praised metro Atlanta’s diversity of settings.
“We liked there was a big city,” Matt said. “That was the hub. But you didn’t have to drive very far to find incredible rural settings. Anything we wanted existed: the quarry, the lab, the school, the mall, the countryside. We shot for 10 years and never ran out of cool locations. It allowed us to write whatever popped in our heads.”
A challenge arose in Season 5 when two key locations were torn down while the show was still in production: Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, which doubled as Hawkins Middle and High School, and a former psychiatric hospital at Emory University’s Briarcliff campus, which was used as Hawkins Lab.
“The school in particular was extremely stressful,” Matt said. “We had to shoot those scenes up front and get them out of the way. The lab was less of an issue. Luckily, demolition kept getting pushed back, or else we would have been in real trouble. We shot inside the lab for the finale very early before we had even finished the script.”
As grateful as the showrunners are for the devoted worldwide following “Stranger Things” has generated, they didn’t want intruders posting spoilers online. Netflix spent $4.4 million on security personnel for Season 5 alone, according to the Georgia film office.
It turns out, the fans who showed up to watch exterior scenes weren’t the problem, Matt noted. “It was the paparazzi that were more annoying. They would use drones. It was a little frustrating. Netflix did a good job keeping them away. I was amazed how few leaks there were.”
Eggo waffles to Kate Bush
The show was an immediate hit when it debuted in 2016. With the arguable exception of “The Walking Dead,” “Stranger Things” has been metro Atlanta’s most influential TV show since the state introduced its generous tax credit system in 2008.
Because of Netflix’s international footprint, viewers in more than 190 countries fell in love with Eleven, Hopper and Demogorgons. The show boosted Eggo Waffle and Dungeons & Dragons sales. It brought largely forgotten 1980s songs like Limahl’s “Neverending Story” and Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” back to the Billboard pop charts. Roller-skating rinks noticed increased traffic after Season 4. And the show minted stars out of relative unknowns, like Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour and Sadie Sink.
Several actors enjoyed their time in Georgia so much, they moved here, including Brown, who now owns a farm in rural Georgia with an array of donkeys, goats, cows and horses.
When Sink, 23, entered Season 2 at age 14 s skateboard loving rebel Max, she was daunted by the show’s popularity. “The stakes were high,” she said. “It was really scary. But I was welcomed with open arms by cast and crew. I eventually found my footing.”
She, like all the kid actors, spent copious hours in a makeshift classroom completing their education requirements. Occasionally their teacher would take them on field trips. Sink’s favorite place: the Atlanta Botanical Garden. “I ended up going there every weekend. I loved it!”
When they got older, the actors explored the city, hanging out in Cabbagetown, hitting spots like low-key Italian eatery BoccaLupo, hipster bar 97 Estoria and bohemian bistro Carroll Street Cafe. They would inevitably get recognized, but Sink didn’t mind the attention. “People knew we’re shooting here so they didn’t question it was us,” she said. “They knew.”
Sink’s character became a focal point during Season 4, and her confrontation with antagonist Vecna almost killed Max. Entering Season 5, Max is alive but in a coma.
Playing Max for five seasons had a profound impact on the young actress.
“She had this natural confidence and toughness about her, and that helped me growing up as I was trying to find my voice,” said Sink, who received a Tony nomination earlier this year for “John Proctor is a Villain.”
Jackson becomes Hawkins
On a windless, clear fall day in mid-November, 21-year-old Cannon Dail, wearing a Hawkins High School letter jacket, was on the tail end of a 45-minute “Stranger Things” walking tour of Jackson town square.
He entered an alleyway off the square that featured the curious spray-painted message on a piece of wood: “Welcome to the Alley Fight Scene.”
“This is where Steve and Jonathan got into a fight Season 1, episode 6,” Dail told the Campos family of six from Newnan, who drove 55 miles east for the tour to celebrate their daughter Isabella’s 10th birthday.
When he asked Isabella and her 7-year-old sister, Audrey, to put up their dukes and reenact the scene in question, they gleefully agreed as their parents snapped photos.
“This is so much fun,” Isabella said, her eyes wide, a smile plastered on her face. She has seen the first four seasons at least four times.
Dail, a tour guide for a year, said he had never seen such a young child so enraptured by his recitation of “Stranger Things” factoids. As a rabid fan of “Stranger Things” himself, he visited Jackson in 2019 as a young teen from Arkansas but found little trace of its role as the stand-in for Hawkins.
Last year, Dail returned and was thrilled to find that Hannah and Cameron Thompson had opened Hawkins Headquarters, an ‘80s-themed merch shop in a former Army/Navy surplus store. He quickly signed on to be a tour guide, handing out Viewfinders to attendees to show moments in the show that match up to the locations he highlights.
The store includes “Stranger Things” murals, an arcade with ‘80s games like Dig Dug, a wall of MTV-style ‘80s era TVs and props, like the actual safe Hopper and Joyce opened in Season 3. There’s also a countertop where tour attendees share pineapple pizza while partaking in trivia.
Hawkins Headquarters is open daily and holds 17 walking tours a week. A revived bus tour returns in January after Season 5 comes out. Visitors have come from every state and more than 75 countries, from Dubai to Brazil: “They’ll grab an Uber and come 45 minutes from the airport,” she said.
The Thompsons aren’t the only entrepreneurs who have jumped on the “Stranger Things” wave.
In Fayetteville, the Byers home was turned into an Airbnb. In Powder Springs, Hopper’s cabin became an escape room.
Douglasville, home to the fictional Palace Arcade, Family Video and other sites, recently held its fifth annual “Stranger Things” block party that drew 3,000 people. Fabiano’s Pizzeria temporarily became Surfer Boy Pizza, a roller-skating rink was built on O’Neal Plaza, and the city created a walk-through “Upside Down” experience.
But Jackson ― seat of Butts County 45 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta and home to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones ― has worked especially hard to take advantage of its “Stranger Things” ties.
Inside Lucy Lu’s Coffee Cafe across from Hawkins Headquarters, a life-sized replica of Max hovers over the cashier counter while Vecna commands control of her body. Next door, there’s a massive mural featuring several of the show’s characters. A former Radio Shack is now an escape room featuring three “Stranger Things” scenarios.
A free “Stranger Things” event in October on the square attracted 6,000 fans. Mayor Carlos Duffy, who credited the Thompsons for sparking the square’s revival, said the town now gets about 300 visitors a week, a number that has increased in the weeks leading up to the debut of the final season.
Hannah Thompson is especially excited about Season 5, because so much of it was shot in Jackson. Netflix initially wanted to close off a portion of the square for three months for filming, she said, but businesses balked. Instead, the show used Jackson for five weeks and built a replica of the square to scale on a backlot at Cinespace Studios.
Business at Hawkins Headquarters is up 20% year over year, she said, but she is anticipating a gangbuster December. “There’s something to be said for the economic impact of fandom even in tight times.”
Going big then going home
One of the first series Netflix produced in house, “Stranger Things” received a modest Season 1 budget. Once it blew up, execs gave the Duffer Brothers more freedom to grow the story and amp up the special effects. They also showed patience as gaps between seasons grew longer.
It took them nearly three years between Seasons 3 and 4 because of the pandemic. The actors and writers strikes in 2023 delayed Season 5, which comes nearly 3½ years after Season 4.
This also meant the kids, many of whom were just 11 or 12 when the show began, are now college age and beyond. Although the timeline of the show has gone from 1983 to 1987, nearly all the key actors are now of legal drinking age.
Wardrobe and makeup had to work harder Season 5 to ensure the kids look of age, though for Sink, playing six years younger was not a stretch given what her character has been through. “She’s pretty weathered for a 16 year old,” Sink said.
Despite the long breaks between seasons, the show’s popularity doesn’t appear to have waned. The Season 5 release date announcement received 250 million social media impressions in its first four days in late spring, Netflix said. The show also reappeared in Netflix’s top 10 most viewed shows earlier this month in anticipation of its return.
The show’s cast of regulars has now grown to 20 with the addition of Linda Hamilton of “Terminator” fame donning an unflattering ‘80s hairdo.
Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film Office, said 7,700 Georgians worked on the show over the past decade, including 3,737 during Season 5. Netflix has pumped more than $800 million into the state economy since 2015, she noted.
“It’s a crown jewel I’m going to miss terribly,” said location scout Tony Holley, one of the first people Netflix hired in 2015. “I did that show from stem to stern. I wish we were working on Season 6!”
Holley joined several of his location colleagues earlier this month at SCAD in Midtown Atlanta to screen the first episode of Season 5.
“When I was in the bubble,” he said, “it was whack-a-mole trying to keep people off sets and ameliorating residents and businesses. Now I just feel pride seeing my locations become tourist attractions.”
Julia Fredette of East Atlanta, who worked in the props department, came to the event wearing a Bradley’s Big Buy jacket that crew members received as wrap gifts at the end of shooting Season 5 last year. (Bradley’s Big Buy, which is a Piggly Wiggly in Palmetto, was featured in Seasons 1 and 2 and makes a return appearance Season 5.)
“Getting a job with ‘Stranger Things’ is like winning the lottery,” Fredette said.
Compared to previous shows she’s worked on, “everything was bigger,” she said. “We had so many tools at our disposal. It was a dream. And I got to work with some of the most talented people in the business.”
“‘Stranger Things’ is a tight-knit family,” said Devin Morales, co-department head for makeup with previous credits like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3″ and “Hillbilly Elegy.” She even had her 12-year-old daughter, Ayla, work as a background actor. “Every department brought their A game. Everyone cared about their job. We did not phone it in.”
“Stranger Things” was a bit like lightning in a bottle for metro Atlanta, a project that captured the zeitgeist, matched only in size in recent years by the Marvel and DC superhero films.
And the Duffer brothers are not tamping down their ambitions to hit it big again. They have two big-budget series coming up for Netflix, neither shot in Georgia: “The Boroughs,” which landed in New Mexico, and “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,” which shot in Toronto.
But they said they hope to work in metro Atlanta in the future.
“It’s really like a second home to us,” Ross said.
“We’re Southern,” Matt noted. “The sweet tea. The barbecue. Everyone is so friendly. I just wish there was a Bojangles closer to Inman Park. That’s my one Atlanta complaint.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Stranger Things,” season 5
First four episodes debut 8 p.m. Wednesday. Three more episodes debut Dec. 25, and the series finale debuts Dec. 31.
On Netflix.
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
