If you see Brad Pitt’s name in the credits for a movie he doesn’t star in, it’s probably because the film was produced by Plan B Entertainment, which was founded in 2001 by Pitt, his then-wife Jennifer Aniston, the late Brad Grey, and Kristin Hahn. The production company has many Pitt vehicles on its resume (“Ad Astra,” “F1”) but that’s not all. For instance, Plan B recently co-produced the meta horror magnum opus “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.”
Plan B first ventured into TV with the failed Ryan Murphy pilot “Pretty/Handsome” in 2008, which was not picked up to series at FX. The company has since returned to TV and produced shows across different streaming platforms and networks, with its biggest recent hits including “3 Body Problem” and “Adolescence” for Netflix. But it hasn’t had success across the board, as the Plan B co-produced Prime Video time travel series “Paper Girls” was canceled after one season in 2022.
“Paper Girls” adapts a 2015-2019 Image Comic series by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang. The morning after Halloween 1988 in fictional Cleveland, Ohio, suburb Sony Stream, four preteen paper girls — “new girl” Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiff Quilkin (Camryn Jones) Mackenzie “Mac” Doyle (Sofia Rosinsky), and KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza) — discover a time machine in an abandoned basement. The comic follows them across different time periods. At first, they’re just sent to their immediate future in 2016, where they meet a grown up Erin (Ali Wong in the show). But later trips swing back and forth from prehistoric times to the far future.
With its eight episode run, Prime Video’s “Paper Girls” merely scratched that surface. Its short life sadly mirrors Vaughan’s acclaimed comic “Y: The Last Man” being turned into a single-season show as well.
Paper Girls is a perfect Stranger Things substitute
“Paper Girls” features four kids in 1980s Midwest suburbia, riding on bicycles and communicating with walkie-talkies, who stumble onto a science fiction story. There are undeniable similarities to “Stranger Things,” and while they’re coincidental (the “Paper Girls” comic was already running when the former premiered in 2016), the story’s parallels to the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix phenomenon probably helped the TV show adaptation get greenlit.
But compared to the 1980s nostalgia in “Stranger Things,” “Paper Girls” takes a harder look at the decade. The very first time we meet Mac in the comic, she insults some local bullies with homophobic slurs — and she’s one of the heroes! But that hatred turns out to be internalized. Across the story, Mac and KJ realize their feelings for each other. (That bumpy ride is another thing the “Paper Girls” TV series didn’t get a chance to realize.) Compare that to “Stranger Things” Season 3, in which one character (Maya Hawke’s Robin) admits she’s a lesbian to another (Joe Keery’s Steve), and he’s totally accepting of it. It’s a nice sentiment about what things should have been like, but it’s also completely ahistorical.
Another story that hits the same mood as “Paper Girls” is the 2026 time travel Amblin throwback “The End of Oak Street” — for one, both have time-displaced dinosaurs. “Paper Girls” doesn’t have as wide a mean streak as “Oak Street,” though, making it a happy medium between that and how saccharine “Stranger Things” can get. If you love the “Paper Girls” TV series and crave more, I’d highly recommend the comic as the next best thing. It’s a quick read at only 30 issues, and it’s got the ending the TV show deserved to adapt.
