Star Wars: Starfighter movie will take inspiration from the Stranger Things final season
Director Shawn Levy collaborated on the Netflix megahit, and is taking his learnings to a galaxy far, far away.
Left wanting more Stranger Things after the Netflix megahit’s season five finale? You’ll find a little of its DNA in a galaxy far, far away, according to a director with a foot in both franchise’s camps.
Shawn Levy, director of 2027’s upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter movie and long-time collaborator on Stranger Things, has revealed the next sci-fi space opera flick has been influenced by his time working on the Netflix show’s final season.
The Deadpool and Wolverine director has worked with Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers since the show’s earliest days, directing several episodes across the series’ five seasons, including the penultimate episode of the final batch. Now working on the Ryan Gosling-fronted Starfighter, Levy hopes to bring some of the Stranger Things finale’s energy to the Star Wars universe.
“I think that if I can balance the epic and the intimate the way the Duffers have with Stranger Things, I’ll make a movie and an original and new Star Wars adventure that can be really satisfying to fans and audiences,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“If I’ve learned anything on Stranger Things, it’s that you can get intimidated by the scale of franchise expectation. But you will lose your way if that’s your focus. I’ve learned the need to stay rooted in character, and themes and relationships on screen. Yes, there’s spectacle and scale, just like Stranger Things. And of course, Star Wars and Starfighter have spectacle and scale and adventure at a level I’ve never done in my whole career. But like Stranger Things, it’s also very much anchored in a human-scale character-sized story.”
A new hope, or a hint of the dark side?
How exciting you find Levy’s comments will come down to how much you enjoyed the somewhat-divisive final run of Netflix episodes, which culminated in a mammoth feature-length episode on New Year’s Eve 2025. Though tying up most of the 10-year-old series’ many threads relatively successfully with large-scale spectacle, many fans were frustrated by the relative-lack of character-building moments amidst the roller-coaster set pieces.
But Levy has nothing but praise for the show’s conclusion.
“It was just creative enthusiasm that brought us to this show, and to stick the landing in the finale season with an episode that was so important to all of us? When you talk about real feelings fueling a fictional scene, in the last 15 minutes of the finale, you have that very deeply.
“You have scenes that are about these characters, but scenes that also capture the feelings among these actors and all of us who made this show together for almost a decade.
“When I watched the finale, I was able to experience it as pure audience and as a fan, and it really blew me away.”
We’ll get to see just how much of an influence Stranger Things has on Star Wars when Starfighter hits cinemas on May 28th, 2027. It stars Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams, and is set in an unexplored part of the Star Wars universe’s history.
As for Stranger Things, expect more to come in from the show in the form of spin-offs — which Levy expects to be involved in, too. First off is the animated ‘Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85’, and that’ll be complemented by a fresh live-action spin-off that is expected to delve deeper into the origin of big, nasty villain, Vecna.
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