Netflix versus Satanic Temple: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

02 Dec 2018

December 2,2018:

Netflix’s adaptation of ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’, a comic book series published by Archie Comics had caused Netflix a great deal of trouble, mainly because a nontheistic religious and political group called The Satanic Temple has filed a $50 million copyright lawsuit against Netflix, regarding their new show – ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’.

In October 2018 The Satanic Temple claimed that the streaming giants copied its depiction of goat-headed deity Baphomet in the show.

Anyone who has watched the show will recognize the statue of an angel-winged-man with the head of a goat. And while no one interacts with the statue, it appears in various scenes throughout the series.

The co-founders of the Satanic temple had previously stated that if no resolution works out then the temple will take aggressive legal action in order to protect their copyright.

Lisa Soper, the production designer of the show Sabrina stated that the similar statue is just a coincidence and the iteration of Baphomet is on many things like Tarot cards, Goya paintings and hence Baphomet can’t be privately owned by the temple.

In the beginning of the month of November 2018 The Satanic temple filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York, alleging that the statue appeared in four episodes of Netflix’s show Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and resembled the one created by the Satanic Temple in 2013 and 2014, drawing inspiration from iconography dating back to the 19th century.

However, after starting legal proceedings, the group revealed that the lawsuit has been settled. In an effort to keep the whole lawsuit quiet, Netflix settled the dispute out of Court for an unknown sum and the details of the settlement remain confidential.

In a statement from the group, they said: “The unique elements of the Satanic Temple's Baphomet statue have been acknowledged in the credits of episodes which have already been filmed. The remaining terms of the settlement are subject to a confidentiality agreement ”. The Satanic Temple's co-founder and spokesman, Lucien Greaves, wrote in a blog post: "So ends one of the most overpublicized of copyright claims.”