‘Stranger Things’ Filming Location: Here’s Where Netflix Show is Set

Stranger Things is back and after several months of filming, the hit nostalgia filled Netflix series is here to take you back in time to the early ‘80s. The show opens one year after the “Upside Down” was first opened and the young Will Beyers disappeared.

About Stranger Things

The first season of the show started on November 6, 1983, when kids started vanishing after researchers from the Hawkins National Laboratory accidentally opened up an alternate dimension. The setting for the show is alluded to be a fictional Midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana. The rural backdrop is reminiscent of the hit supernatural movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is said to be the inspiration for the show.

The second season will return to Hawkins around Halloween 1984 and will go into deeper detail for Will’s disappearance. According to Variety, the original title for the show was Montauk for the Long Island beach town in which the story originally took place.

Netflix Stranger Things
The cast of “Stranger Things” arrive at the Weinstein Company and Netflix 2017 Golden Globes After Party on Sunday, January 8, 2017 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. (CarlaVanWagoner / Shutterstock, Inc.)

Show creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained ahead of the show’s first season that they wanted a coastal town for the throwback series. “We were excited about the idea of doing something coastal,” Ross told The A.V. Club. “Probably our favorite movie of all time is Jaws, and Montauk is one of the bases for Amity, so I think that’s where that idea came from.”

Stranger Things and Georgia’s Film Tax Credit

Unfortunately, due to logistics, it was “necessary for production reasons to set this not in a coastal town.” In fact, production moved the show from the coast to the Midwest after the show started filming in the Atlanta suburbs, which is not a surprise. Many TV shows and movies are now filming in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Project Casting, there were over 60 TV shows and movies filming in the state in August. In addition, The Walking Dead, Dynasty, and nearly the entire Marvel universe filmed in Atlanta, Georgia. Why are so many shows filming in Georgia? You can thank the state’s film tax credits, which provide 30% tax credit on all productions filmed in the state that spend over $500,000.

Netflix Casting Calls for Speaking Roles

That said, before Stranger Things was ever a cult-classic, casting directors were searching across the ATL for actors to work on the show. A 2016 Stranger Things casting call posted on Project Casting reveals casting directors were seeking actors for speaking roles. After the show became a hit, it became one of the most top-secret productions to film in Georgia.

Netflix
The Cast of “Stranger Things” arrives at the Weinstein Company and Netflix 2017 Golden Globes After Party on Sunday, January 8, 2017 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. (CarlaVanWagoner / Shutterstock, Inc.)