The Duffer Brothers Are Being Accused of Plagiarizing 'Stranger Things'

The creators of Netflix's megahit 80's sci-fi series Stranger Things--The Duffer Brothers--are being sued for allegedly plagiarizing their show off of a short film.

Charlie Kessler, who directed the short Montauk, which premiered at the 2012 Hamptons International Film Festival, filed a lawsuit yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming that in 2014 he'd pitched the concept to Matt and Ross Duffer at a Tribeca Film Festival party, and that the two had subsequently stolen "the script, ideas, story and film," Deadlinereports.

Kessler's film involved a missing boy, a nearby military base conducting experiments on children, and a giant monster from another dimension, just like the real Stranger Things. Kessler explained that the Duffers had been calling their show The Montauk Project before settling on the official title, and Deadlinereports that when Netflix greenlighted the series back in 2015, it was under the title Montauk.

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Both Montauk and Stranger Things are preceded by a book called The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, about secret government experiments conducted on Long Island.

"After the massive success of Stranger Things that is based on Plaintiff's concepts that Plaintiffs discussed with Defendants, Defendants have made huge sums of money by producing the series based on Plaintiff's concepts without compensating or crediting Plaintiff for his Concepts," Kessler's suit says.