Edward Earl Newton

Earl Newton started his career in a small Florida town, shooting movies on a one-chip digital camera with friends and family. Early on, several rejections from film school nearly convinced him to seek another career. But after a serious car accident almost took his life, Newton pushed himself into filmmaking on his own terms. His first film post-accident was "Fall of a Saga," a satirical send-up of George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels. The film was well-received by audiences, eventually building into a national tour encompassing more than 12 cities, including a standing-room-only presentation at Comic-Con in 2004. Later, Film Threat would list it among the greatest Star Wars-inspired films ever made. Critics praised Saga's Twilight Zone influences, and in 2007, Newton took the concept one step further. He released "Stranger Things" (2007), the first HD science-fiction anthology series to distribute its content over the Internet. The show took an alternate-world look at the reality we see around us, and featured stories from a number of successful genre authors (including New York Times bestseller Scott Sigler and five-time Stoker Award winner Gary Braunbeck). Stranger Things became an instant hit, boasting thousands of subscribers before the first episode dropped, and expanding by tens of thousands in the months that followed. In 2008, Stranger Things was picked up for television distribution by Illusion TV, making it the first science fiction show in history to move from the Internet to television. The following year, the show was nominated for the Ray Bradbury Award, for excellence in science fiction motion pictures. Presently, Newton resides in Los Angeles.