'Stranger Things' Season 5 Delayed
Production on the fifth and final season of st Stranger Things is at a standstill as the WGA strike marches on. Matt and Ross Duffer, the show's creators, announced the news in a Twitter post, penning, "Writing does not stop when filming begins. While we're excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out. #wgastrong." As of now, a release date has not been set. The Wrap reached out to Netflix for comment on the matter, but as of this report, has yet to hear back.
Priah Ferguson, who stars on the show as Erica Sinclair, spoke with PopCulture.com in March 2023 while serving as a mentor at Disney Dreamers Academy. She opened up about aging out of the current roles she's playing, including Stranger Things, and what she hopes to showcase in the next phase of her career.
Regarding playing roles that require her to be younger than her actual age, she told us "I definitely think it's hard because as I'm getting older, I want to play more older roles, but because of my look, I'm still petite or whatever, I do get the younger roles. Especially by being in Stranger Things, because in the eighties, it's a more period piece, and kids in the eighties already look younger or, I guess more like their age back then. So I think being in that does make me look a little bit younger than people expect." She's hopeful that moving forward, she creates more of her own content, and can be taken seriously as she matures in the acting world.
This is the first writer's strike since 2008, which lasted 100 days, and led to the cancelation of beloved shows at the time, including Girlfriends, which never received an ending that fans' desired. There are several reasons the current strike has been enacted, including the industry's reliance on gig work, small high-intensity writers' rooms, the industry's approach to Artificial Intelligence, and writers' salaries, and more.
Since the strike, various shows have halted production, including all of the late-night shows on network television. Streaming services have been the center of the strike with the guild saying though revenue and budgets have increased, the writers' share of that money hasn't and in some cases continued to shrink.