Will Millie Bobby Brown leave money on the table to move on from Stranger Things?

It’s been the role that turned British actress Millie Bobby Brown into a household name, but it looks like her time playing Eleven in the smash-hit Netflix series Stranger Things will, much like the series itself, be coming to an end. Having already stated her desire that the show should end after its fifth season, reports have now suggested she has turned down a £10 million deal to star in a spin-off film, in what is an attempt for the actress to grow away from the role.

Sources have told tabloid newspaper The S*n that the franchise has “[...] so many directions it could go. Nothing is off the table. They think it would translate to a stage show for Broadway and the West End just like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Another spin-off series following some of the show's main characters is also being worked up.”

But that runs in contrast to Brown’s comments about the series in an interview with Seventeen, stating that “I feel like there’s a lot of the story that’s been told now, and we know of it, it’s been in our lives for a very long time, and that she was “definitely ready to wrap up.”

“I’m able to create stories myself that are important to me and focus on the bigger picture,” the Enola Holmes actress shared. But that comment itself runs again in contrast to some of her comments alluding to wanting to gain a role in hit HBO comedy-mystery anthology The White Lotus; in the same interview with Seventeen, when asked if she would take up an offer in starring in Mike White’s hit show, she replied: “[I] would never say no to that.”

Given that Millie Bobby Brown first portrayed Eleven back in the first season of Stranger Things at the tender age of 11 years old, it’s hard to begrudge the actress wishing to mature and move away from that role. Spare a thought for some of the other cast members though - fan favourite Gaetano Matarazzo is fearing for his career, stating on his appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon “Not only has it been amazing, but it's been pretty great job security for a while. Back to freelance.'

Before the outrage commences from the strong fandom that Stranger Things has, bear in mind that Millie Bobby Brown isn’t the first person to leave the proverbial money at the table; some heavyweights of Hollywood have either shown a disdain for sequels, or outright turned roles down - for better or, with our examples, for worse. 

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey was the “it” comedy actor in Hollywood during the ‘90s, with a string of box office hits that included Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb & Dumber. But it took a sequel to his career-changing role as the smart-mouthed Ventura to put Carrey off the idea of sequels for a long, long time.

He passed on an offer to star in a sequel to his hit CGI-heavy film, The Mask after his experience filming Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls convinced him that reprising a character he'd previously played offered him no challenges as an actor, akin to the reasons around that time he chose not to film a Dumb & Dumber sequel.

Both films went ahead - Son of the Mask with Jamie Kennedy and Dumb & Dumber: When Harry Met Lloyd were both critical and commercial flops. Carrey however has softened his stance on sequels, having portrayed Lloyd Christmas once again in Dumb and Dumber To and as Dr. Robotnik in the popular Sonic The Hedgehog movie franchise.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Were you aware that before Mark Wahlberg donned the prosthetic that helped transition him from teen heartthrob to serious leading actor, Leonardo DiCaprio was originally envisioned for the role of Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights? He had a meeting with director Paul Thomas Anderson but was put off by the lack of experience from the future Academy Award nominee.

“Boogie Nights is a movie I loved and I wish I would’ve done,” DiCaprio told GQ. Asked whether he’d reject Titanic instead if he could go back in time, DiCaprio was stumped. 

“I’m not saying I would have. But it would have been a different direction, career-wise. I think they’re both great and wish I could have done them both … The truth is, if I’d not done Titanic, I wouldn’t be able to do the types of movies or have the career I have now, for sure. But it would have been interesting to see if I had gone the other way.”

Bruce Willis

Could that iconic pottery scene in the 1990 classic Ghost have been the same if instead of the late Patrick Swayze creating a vase with Demi Moore, it was her real-life husband Bruce Willis instead? 

While Moore starred alongside Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg in the film, which became the highest-grossing film of 1990, Willis found the whole concept confusing, believing it to be slightly convoluted in portraying a dead man attempting to help his grieving girlfriend move on while simultaneously solving his murder.

Years later, he would portray a dead man attempting to help a grieving child while also coming to terms with his mortality in M. Night Shyamalan’s hit film, The 6th Sense. Perhaps Bruce took the role before reaching the part in the script of the famous M. Night “twist”?

Michelle Pfeiffer

Jodie Foster’s role in The Silence of The Lambs earned her an Academy Award and the adulations of film buffs everywhere for her tenacious, yet sensitive FBI agent Clarice Starling, pitting her wits against not only the serial killer Wild Bill but those of charming psychopath Hannibal Lecter (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins.)

But the role originally was offered to Michelle Pfeiffer, who worked with the film’s director Jonathan Demme in the 1988 movie, Married To The Mob. It was the content of the film, however, that ultimately led Pfeiffer to turn it down, telling The New Yorker in 2022 “I was trepidatious. There was such evil in that film. It was that evil won in the end, that at the end of that film evil ruled out. I was uncomfortable with that ending. I didn’t want to put that out into the world.”

Christina Applegate

As Elle Woods in the hit film Legally Blonde, birthday girl Reese Witherspoon truly became America’s Sweetheart with her character good natured, bubbly Valley Girl yet with a fierce work ethic and an outside-the-box approach to winning court cases. In fact, alongside perhaps June Carter-Cash in Walk The Line, it is easily one of Witherspoon’s most recognisable roles.

But that might have not been the case if Christina Applegate had taken the role instead; Applegate revealed in 2015 that she turned down the part as she thought it was too similar to the character she played on the long-running sitcom Married… with Children, Kelly Bundy.

“I got scared of repeating myself,” she said. “What a stupid move that was, right? [But] Reese deserved that. She did a much better job than I ever could, and so that’s her life, that’s her path.”