There’s this dude named Aaron Sims, who worked on concept art for the series. Before that, he allegedly worked with a dude named Jeffrey Kennedy who wrote the screenplay for a movie titled TOTEM. The lawsuit alleges that Sims recycled “plot, sequence, characters, theme, dialogue, mood, and setting, as well as copyrighted concept art” for STRANGER THINGS. Netflix countered by saying: “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for years, even though Netflix has repeatedly explained to him that The Duffer Brothers had never heard of him or his unpublished script until he began threatening to sue them. After we refused to give in to his demands for a payoff, he filed this baseless lawsuit. There is no shortage of people who would like to claim credit for creating ‘Stranger Things.’ But the truth is the show was independently conceived by The Duffer Brothers, and is the result of their creativity and hard work.”
The last guy who tried suing the Duffers dropped his suit right before it went to trial, you may recall. I expect this is a similar case. When a property becomes big enough and successful enough, claims of copyright infringement are almost inevitable. Sometimes it’s cheaper for the entity being sued to just pay off the complainant than pay all the legal bills. That explains why it’s financially feasible for the person filing the frivolous lawsuit to do it. Not that I know this is a frivolous lawsuit. I don’t. But I suspect it is. Opinions aren’t libel, and mine is that this is another case of much ado about nothing.