The first week, I think, we had 15 pitches, and it was all passes. There was a moment where we’re like, “Oh, I think people aren’t getting it.” And then the next week, offers started to come in, and luckily Netflix understood it right away.

ROSS There was a lot of that question of, “Why can’t it just be this sheriff going around investigating paranormal activities in a ‘Twin Peaks’ town?” We just weren’t interested in that. What we didn’t realize is that Netflix — they never said this, but just looking at it — they’re sort of moving into Phase 2, in which Phase 1 is, they’ve got the David Finchers and the Jenji Kohans, very successful people with proven track records. And they had so much success with that, with things like “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black,” that they’re able to roll the dice on some younger voices.

And you knew you wanted this to be a TV series — this was not a film idea?

MATT I think we initially talked about it as a film, but we thought it would be better as a series. The cool thing about TV is you have a lot more time. [But] you’re not stuck now with 22 episodes. It’s almost impossible to tell a cinematic story when you have that many episodes.

ROSS This is almost really the first time that I can think of in history that people are able to come up with a story, and they’re able to go, how long should this be? Should this be six hours? Should this be seven hours? Should this be 11 hours? And Netflix is very good at not dictating how many episodes it should be.