‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Gets A Conflicting Update Ahead Of Release

Netflix is going big or going home when it comes to the final season of Stranger Things, season 5. Now, the Duffer Brothers are talking about what exactly has gone into the final season, which indicates it is going to possibly be the biggest thing that Netflix has ever done. Season 5 is said to be “eight blockbuster movies,” they said at a Netflix event.

“We had captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet.”

650 hours for an 8-10+ hour season may sound totally wild, but it’s actually pretty common for high budget projects. In Hollywood, this can vary. In the Golden Age of Hollywood back in the ‘30s through ’60s, it might have been a 10:1 ratio, 25 hours of film for a 90 minute movie. Now? 650/10 is definitely not the highest. Some examples, via Vashivisuals:

The highest ratio they found at the time (2016) was Deadpool with 555 hours of raw footage for a 108 minute movie, a ratio of 308 to 1. So yes, for TV shows, that’s even more footage given the runtime of an entire season. This would be a 65 to 1 ratio for Stranger Things, so it’s not as large as it sounds if you know the way these things normally work in the field.

The reason being is that you simply do not shoot a scene and move on. You do many, many takes for scenes much of the time, you do extended sequences that will be cut up into pieces. You film things that will be cut entirely. Sifting through all this raw footage can be one of the hardest parts of filmmaking, which is why editing is such a key job in the industry. It’s deeply important to storytelling and the overall flow and feel of the series or film.

But for Stranger Things season 5’s runtimes, they’re not all going to be 90 minute movies. Actor Finn Wolfhard said that even though yes, the season is long, it’s not super different than before, which contradicts what the Duffer Brother just said here.

“It’s definitely a long season,” Wolfhard told Collider. “Not every episode is like a full-blown movie, but there are definitely some episodes this year that the runtime is definitely film-length. When all that adds up, I guess they are like little micro-movies…there are some episodes that are still 40 minutes, 45 minutes.”

That would imply that while there are some longer episodes, it is not eight blockbuster movies like the Duffers said. As in, how is a 40 minute episode going to be a blockbuster? Maybe in budget and visuals, I suppose, which may lead to the conflicting views here.

Regardless, it’s going to be a massive season and bigger than everything else that came before it. The final two episodes of season 4 were certainly in “blockbuster” territory and at the very least, we will get a few more or those here, including no doubt the finale stretch.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.