'Stranger Things' Season 4 With Each Episode Costing $30M, Had the World Premiere Of the First Episode

Stranger Things Season 4 is right around the corner, set to premiere the first of the two parts of the season on May 27. 

Leading up to the premiere, the first episode of the show was screened for the media on Saturday. The anticipation has only been building for the show especially with this sneak peek that is giving us the first impression of what to expect. So far, the reviews have been positive and the people who had the opportunity to watch it have called it a must-watch. 

Collider's Steven Weintraub said he "loved it" praising the episode's focus on character building rather than rushing through the setup. Comicbook has shared that the initial reactions for the show is that it is "the show's scariest outing yet" and it is much more mature than the previous seasons. Variety has shared about the villain of this season, Vecna, "a ghoulish, powerful lich that slithers out of the Upside Down to wreak havoc on Hawkins." The wait for the fourth season has been long but from the first impressions it is clear that it was worth it. 

“Vecna is a psychological horror that I don’t think we’ve really seen,” David Harbour, who plays former police chief Jim Hopper, stated. “The Upside Down has been this wild west world where there are creatures running around, there’s violence, but we’ve never seen something as calculatedly psychologically evil as this. That’s exciting because he is a true big bad that we’ve needed in the series.” To bring Vecna to life and to make the series as great as the first positive reviews are making it out to be, is no easy task. A lot of money and efforts go into making it no doubt.

As per a report from The Wall Street Journal, Netflix has reportedly invested nearly $30 million per episode for the latest season of Stranger Things. “We always take big risks and big swings and sometimes, you know, many times they work and sometimes they don’t,” Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV for Netflix said of Netflix’s expensive misses. “It’s a creative endeavor and it’s not a science.” She also stated, “We’re always going to make great shows and have the amount of money needed for the creator’s vision.”

With nine episodes in this season, the total cost of the show comes up to $270 million. This would make Stranger Things Season 4 more expensive than the majority of movies made, as per Complex, including every Marvel film other than the three Avengers films. Game of Thrones, was one of the most expensive series ever made and had nearly half the budget of about $15 million per episode in its final season. Netflix has been losing subscribers and is currently looking to introduce ads and increase subscription costs for the streaming platform.

Stranger Things will be back for one more season after this. The fourth season will be coming out in two parts. Volume 1 of the fourth season arrives on Friday, May 27, and will have five episodes. Volume 2 will arrive on July 1 and will have four episodes.