I figured this would be the case design wise. I feel like Carnival is a new concept for them that the team really feel in love with and wanted to challenge themselves to create a "new" type of house. Polter is a white whale for them so I knew at least visually they would go to great lengths to make it as close to the film as possible. Stranger is a weird IP. No IP in the past has ever had THIS big of marketing/merchandise push that Stranger has (except made TWD but it didn't have nearly as much merch). They will never tell us the budget or how they got the rights, but I almost feel like Netflix gave them Stranger for free and provided access to as much of the source audio, actors, etc that they could. I bet they are getting a share of the merch profits but really they are saving themselves a TON of money on their own marketing. Having the Stranger Things name (and the Netflix name) in TV ads, billboards, sitting inside grocery stores, etc is a huge marketing push for Netflix that cost Netflix nothing. I've said it before, but I still wouldn't be surprised if they have a Netflix employee at the exit of the house passing out free trials to the service