What was Stranger Things originally known as during development? It was originally known as Montauk.
The early version of the series was set in Montauk, New York, rather than in the fictional Indiana town of Hawkins. The Duffer Brothers chose Montauk partly because of its connection to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, whose fictional setting, Amity Island, was based on the Long Island community.
The working title also connected the project to the Montauk Project conspiracy theory, which alleges secret experiments at Camp Hero. That influence helped shape the show’s atmosphere of government secrecy and supernatural danger, although Stranger Things is fictional.
When the Duffers moved the story to Hawkins, they needed a new title as well as a new setting. Hawkins gave the creators more freedom to impose events such as a quarantine on a fictional town. Netflix then marketed the series under the title Stranger Things, which was chosen partly because it echoed the title of Stephen King’s novel Needful Things. Montauk was the development title, not the name of the finished series.