Stranger Things fans react to filming halt during writers’ strike

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Stranger Things co-creators Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer tweeted over the weekend that filming the upcoming season is not possible while members of the Writer’s Guild of America are on strike.

According to Nielsen, the show’s last season broke records with 5,000,000,000 viewing minutes, placing third only behind Tiger King and Ozark, another series filmed in Georgia.

This is the first strike in 15 years. More than 11,000 writers striking. Less than 40 of those writers are here in Georgia.

There are several recognizable landmarks across Georgia where crews filmed portions of the series. Fans like Gary Cole said now that filming of the fifth and final season has stalled, they’re hoping the production will resume soon.

“Me and my daughter have been looking forward to it, we talk about it all the time. The halt is terrible for the fans, but I hope it gets the writers what they need,” said Cole.

Cole and his daughter Hannah bonded over the show and the landmarks they could spot throughout the state.

At the heart of the strike is a fear that quickly developing artificial intelligence could be used to write scripts and leave writers without work.

Emory University professor David Schwiedel said systems like ChatGPT can use existing patterns from existing scripts to craft a storyline.

“Typing the phrase ‘I’m going to’ then this going to look at the pattern and see what tends to come next,” said Schwiedel.

Schwiedel said without the original ideas from writers, the technology won’t work. Instead of AI replacing writers, he thinks it could be incorporated into the writing process.