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Stranger Things facing plagiarism lawsuit

Short film director claims he pitched a similar idea to the Duffer Bros. in 2014.

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Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer are facing a lawsuit by a short film director who claims the Netflix series stole his idea.

Charlie Kessler says he made the 6 minute film Montauk about an incident on a Long Island beach, in 2012 as a teaser for a feature film The Montauk Project. He alleges that he pitched the idea to Matt and Ross Duffer, when they met at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. Kessler says the idea went nowhere at the time, but the Duffer brothers used it as the germ for 2016’s Stranger Things.

The short film uses found footage to tell a story about paranormal phenomena in the vicinity of a government facility.

A book, “The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time,” was published in 1992, and tells of repressed memories of secret government experiments at Montauk’s Camp Hero. Versions of the story has circulated on conspiracy sites for many years. Tellingly, some of the Stranger Things cast have alluded to the connection, saying in an interview that the show was based on stories about Camp Hero.

Kessler is seeking an injunction ordering the Duffers to stop using his concepts and to destroy all materials based on those concepts, as well as restitution, lost profits and punitive damages.

Netflix declined to comment on the complaint.

Source: Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2 Responses

  1. Really? Because there has never been any other shows or stories that have paranormal happenings near a government facility? (where’s the rolling eyes emoji when you need it lol)

  2. There’s a borrowed germ of an idea from any number of shows and movies over the decades, any regular viewer of sci-fi shows will note similarities of plot and classic alien characters that have been used and re-used over many years, Steven King”s short stories have also been re-interpreted and ‘The Mist’ comes to mind for it’s similarity to Stranger Things as well. ‘The Dome’ could be said to have its origins in DC comics stories of societies protected from a malevolent force under a dome which also be traced back to the 1920’s.

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