The $50 million lawsuit filed by the Satanic Temple against Netflix over their new hit series ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ has reached a settlement before going to court. The Satanic Temple claimed that the statue of Pagan goat-headed deity Baphomet, which appears in the foyer of the Academy of Unseen Arts on ‘Sabrina’, infringed on the copyright of a similar statue that exists at the Satanic Temple. Indeed, both statues share the same pose and both also include two small children looking up at him.
Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves (right) announced plans to pursue legal action via Twitter on Halloween day. That was followed a little over a week later by the suit being filed.
Obviously, most of the specifics were not made public. But the Satanic Temple’s attorney Stuart de Haan did issue the following statement:
“The Satanic Temple is pleased to announce that the lawsuit it recently filed against Warner Bros. and Netflix has been amicably settled. The unique elements of the Satanic Temple’s Baphomet statue will be acknowledged in the credits of episodes which have already been filmed. The remaining terms of the settlement are subject to a confidentiality agreement.”
Greaves had previously stated that it was the Temple’s obligation to take legal action in order to protect their copyright. He also expressed concern over propriety– basically, after the Temple had spent $100,000 to design and create their statue, they didn’t want any confusion over which statue came first.
Greaves seems to feel that the Temple (and he, himself) have been the subject of unwarranted attacks over their lawsuit. Also in part of the statement, he expressed:
“I have gotten quite a bit of hate mail from people seemingly basic enough to conceive of the situation as one in which a large powerful Satanic organization is using its might to bully an uncertain and innocent teenage witch who has just been newly exposed to the wide, cruel world. The truth is, it is a poor commentary upon our entire culture, in my eyes, that media overwhelmed this copyright claim, relative to which the coverage of our rally in Arkansas, which confronted still unresolved questions about the continued American dedication to Liberal Democracy, received sparse reporting for a day.”
… Er… He knows that Sabrina isn’t real, right?
So it looks as if Netflix will simply be adding a credit in existing episodes of ‘Sabrina’ acknowledging the similarity between the statues. The second season went into production immediately after the first wrapped– months before the first season became available to stream, meaning there are still several episodes unseen that may also include the offending statue. It’s possible that the statue can be digitally altered in post-production, and possibly even tweaked in reality for episodes that have yet to be filmed.
It hasn’t been announced when the second season will air, but the most likely time frame will be around Halloween, like the first. Before that, a ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ holiday special will be released sometime in December.
Source: Variety
