“The Shawshank Redemption” filmmaker Frank Darabont ended an 11-year retirement from directing when the opportunity to helm two episodes of “Stranger Things 5″ presented itself. Why? He recently told The Daily Beast that it’s the blockbuster Netflix series’ heart that convinced him it was time to step out of retirement and direct again.
“What really dragged me out of retirement was that my wife and I really love this show,” Darabont said about “Stranger Things.” “Our content now is so filled with horrible people doing horrible things for greedy reasons but ‘Stranger Things’ has so much heart. That positivity is something I really responded to.”
Darabont’s last directing credit was episodes of the short-lived TNT drama series “Mob City” in 2013. He hasn’t directed a movie since 2007’s Stephen King horror adaptation “The Mist.” His other big directorial efforts include “The Green Mile” and “The Walking Dead.”
Asked if “Stranger Things 5” would lead to future directorial efforts, Darabond responded: “Who knows? I haven’t missed the business but I have missed being on set with creative people… It may well be one and done, but we’ve still got time.”
“Stranger Things 5” has been filming this year in Atlanta ahead of an expected debut on Netflix in 2025. The fifth season will also be the last for “Stranger Things.” Speaking to Total Film magazine last year, series executive producer and director Shawn Levy said Season 5 will expand the scale of the already-humungous Season 4, which had two episodes that were feature length and ran around 90 minutes.
“There’s no way to be contiguous with Season 4, and not, frankly, expand scale and depth,” Levy said. “It’s major, major, cinematic storytelling that happens to be called a TV series. ‘Stranger Things 5‘ is as big as any of the biggest movies that we see.”
David Harbour, who has played Hopper since the pilot episode, told the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast around the same time that he knows how series creators Matt and Ross Duffer will end the show.
“I know where we net out and it’s very, very moving,” Harbour said. That is the term I will use…It’s a hell of an undertaking, too. I mean, the set pieces and the things in the scripts that we saw are bigger than anything we’ve done in the past.”
“Stranger Things 5” remains in production.