Netflix agrees to end screenwriter's 'Stranger Things' copyright lawsuit

Netflix and the makers of its hit show ‘Stranger Things’ have resolved a lawsuit brought by a screenwriter who claimed they copied his screenplay about a girl with special powers who fights monsters from another dimension, according to a filing in Los Angeles federal court.

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Jeffrey Kennedy’s Irish Rover Entertainment agreed on Friday to drop its lawsuit against Netflix and Matt and Ross Duffer with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled.

“Stranger Things was independently conceived by the Duffer Brothers, came into existence because of their creativity, and has succeeded because of their vision and hard work,” a Netflix spokesperson said on Monday. “This lawsuit was completely meritless and we’re glad to be able to put it behind us.”

Representatives for Irish Rover did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

A trial in the case was scheduled to begin next month.

‘Stranger Things’, the story of a group of adolescent friends in rural Indiana in the 1980s who battle creatures from an alternate dimension called the ‘Upside Down’, debuted on Netflix in 2016 and became a smash hit for the streaming platform.

Kennedy’s company sued Netflix and the show’s creators the Duffer Brothers in 2020 for allegedly copying from his screenplay for a project called ‘Totem’.

Kennedy said his work was based on one of his childhood friendships in South Bend, Indiana, in the 1980s. He said that ‘Totem’ and ‘Stranger Things’ both revolve around a young girl with supernatural powers seeking to ‘rescue a loved one from having been abducted by a monster and carried to an alternate dimension that is a dark copy of their current reality’.

The lawsuit says Kennedy’s screenplay and ‘Stranger Things’ have several similarities in their characters, plot, dialogue and themes. Kennedy accused an artist who developed concept art for both his project and ‘Stranger Things’ of sharing his work with the Duffer Brothers.

Netflix and the makers of ‘Stranger Things’ denied the allegations in court filings and said the stories are ‘objectively different’ by ‘virtually every imaginable measure’.

“Most glaringly, Stranger Things features a core group of children who fight off evil monsters while navigating teenage social issues,” the defendants said. “Totem, on the other hand, features adults, and its characters and storylines are deeply immersed in Native American imagery and mythology.”

The case is Irish Rover Entertainment LLC v. Sims, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, No. 2:20-cv-06293.

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