‘Stranger Things’ Creators: Plagiarism Lawsuit Is ‘Meritless’

Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of Netflix’s Stranger Things, said a lawsuit claiming they ripped off another director's idea is “completely meritless,” according to a statement made through their attorney Wednesday. The statement says the man behind the suit “had no connection to the creation or development of Stranger Things.” Charlie Kessler, who directed the short film Montauk, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday claiming he met the brothers in 2014, and they discussed turning his short into a TV show. He accused them of ultimately stealing his "script, idea, and story" to make Stranger Things. “The Duffer Brothers have neither seen Mr. Kessler’s short film nor discussed any project with him. This is just an attempt to profit from other people’s creativity and hard work,” the Duffers’ statement read. Both the show and the short film were created after the publication of the 1995 book The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, which is about experiments conducted at a government base, according to Variety.