80s thriller starring Winona Ryder has been the hit of the summer in the US

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The boss of Netflix has said the streaming service would be “dumb” not to commission a second season of Stranger Things, the 80s supernatural thriller that has proved the hit of the summer.

The show’s creators have not revealed whether they have written a second season, but have hinted that they plan an even darker follow-up to the eight-parter, which follows a group of children navigating shadowy government plots and terrifying monsters in search of a missing friend.

Critics have been taken with the young cast of relative unknowns, Winona Ryder’s performance as desperate mother Joyce, and the 80s soundtrack.

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Asked by the Guardian whether Netflix would commission another series, chief executive Reed Hastings stopped short of confirming a deal had been done, but said “we would be dumb not to”.

Netflix does not release viewing figures for its shows, but Hastings pointed to the scores for Stranger Things on film and TV site IMBD as evidence of its success.

He said: “Because we don’t have advertising we are under a whole different model to not compare all the shows and rank other shows, because it kind of doesn’t matter what everybody loves the most it, matters what you or I love most.

“You can get approximations ... if you look on IMDB the most popular TV show right now it’s Stranger Things, so that’s a reasonable proxy. It’s not that there’s no data, just that we don’t give out our data.”

Stranger Things, he added, fitted into Netflix’s strategy of commissioning and buying shows with a “different angle”.

“Breaking Bad was the good guy gone dark to support his family ... You see Winona Ryder going crazy looking for her kid, it’s something especially with the 80s side of it hasn’t been seen before.”

Speaking at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles last week, the brothers behind the series, Matt and Ross Duffer, said if it was green-lit a second series would follow a similar format of eight instalments running for between 45 and 55 minutes. They would however, ramp up the action more slowly opening where “Joyce isn’t at an 11 from the beginning”, said Matt.

He added: “We want it to feel a little bit different, maybe a little bit darker, but still have the sense of fun.”