Update: Stranger Things creators deny stealing idea for the Netflix series

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Update: Alex Kohner, attorney for the Duffer brothers, responded to yesterday's allegations: "Mr. Kessler’s claim is completely meritless," Kohner said. "He had no connection to the creation or development of ‘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." Well, I doubt we've heard the last of this.

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Ruh oh. In 2012, Charlie Kessler made a short-film slated to act as a teaser for a feature-film to be titled THE MONTAUK PROJECT. Several years later, Kessler alleges that he pitched the concept to Matt and Ross Duffer at the Tribeca Film Festival. It seemed like the idea went nowhere at the time, so Kessler was more than surprised to see Stranger Things released on Netflix in 2016, particularly as the series seemed to share several similarities with his original pitch.

In a lawsuit filed today, Charlie Kessler is seeking restitution as well as the destruction of all materials which were allegedly stolen from his original concept. The lawsuit also lays out the similarities between The MONTAUK PROJECT and Stranger Things: A young boy who disappears, a shady government run project at an abandoned military base which is conducting experiments on children, a cop with a haunted past who vows to find the missing boy, portals to another world, and the creation of a monster. It's also worth noting that when Stranger Things was first announced, it was titled Montauk. It's also possible that Kessler and the Duffer brothers were both inspired by the same real-life conspiracy theory about Montauk, which alleges that secret government experiments took place at Camp Hero for the purposes of developing psychological warfare techniques as well as research into time-travel and other paranormal phenomenon. You can check out the full complaint for yourself right here.

Neither Netflix nor representatives for the Duffer brothers have offered a comment on the allegations at this time.

Stranger Things is expected to return for a third season in 2019.