Matt and Ross Duffer along with Netflix are facing a new lawsuit as they are being accused of illegally lifting ideas from a screenplay called 'Totem' by Jeffrey Kennedy.
- Jul 18, 2020
AceShowbiz - "Stranger Things" creators Matt and Ross Duffer and Netflix are facing another lawsuit for copyright infringement over an unpublished script.
According to the papers, which were filed on Wednesday (15Jul20) at a California federal court by Irish Rover Entertainment, the idea for the hit show was taken from a screenplay titled "Totem", written by Jeffrey Kennedy, with the "plot, sequence, characters, theme, dialogue, mood, and setting, as well as copyrighted concept art" all mirroring the popular series.
It was claimed Aaron Sims connects the two projects as he is said to have worked with Kennedy during the screenplay's development before then working on "Stranger Things" concept art for its first two seasons.
"Totem" focused on a girl named Kimimela, or Kimi, who has supernatural abilities and helps friends find a portal to an alternate reality where they fight off its inhabitants, including a "dark spirit named Azrael and his army of Blackwolf."
"In Stranger Things, one of the characters is a little girl name Eleven or El for short who has supernatural powers," the legal papers state. "Eleven helps her friends find the portal gate to an alternate supernatural plane and helps them battle the plane's inhabitants; a Shadow Monster and his army of Demogorgon."
In response to the lawsuit, a Netflix representative told The Wrap, "Mr. Kennedy has been peddling these far-fetched conspiracy theories for years, even though Netflix has repeatedly explained to him that The Duffer Brothers had never heard of him or his unpublished script until he began threatening to sue them... the truth is the show was independently conceived by The Duffer Brothers, and is the result of their creativity and hard work."
This isn't the first time the Duffer Brothers have been sued over "Stranger Things" - Charles Kessler previously claimed they had stolen his idea from his 2012 short film "Montauk", but he pulled the plug on the lawsuit two days before the trial was slated to begin in Los Angeles last year (19).
