- Yellowjackets is being sued for copyright infringement
- Showtime has been accused of stealing the idea of Yellowjackets from a 2015 survival thriller Eden
- The lawsuit alleges that Yellowjackets has ‘substantially, strikingly similar elements’ to Eden
If crashing planes and cannibalism weren’t enough, Yellowjackets is now being sued for copyright infringement. The best Paramount Plus show is accused of ripping off the 2015 survival thriller Eden.
With Yellowjackets season 3 set to air in 2025, Showtime has been hit with a lawsuit claiming the idea for Yellowjackets has been stolen from Shyam Madiraju’s Eden, which is available to stream on one of the best free streaming services, Tubi.
The copyright infringement lawsuit filed on November 14 in New York federal court alleges that Yellowstone “borrows heavily from Eden to the point at which they are substantially similar.”
According to Deadline, the complaint reads: “Comparing the Film to the Show’s plots, setting, mood, pace, stories, characters, sequence of events, themes, and scene/dialogue similarities, demonstrates that the two works, in most respects, are identical. These substantially, strikingly similar elements leave little doubt that most substantive elements of Yellowjackets are copied from Eden.”
How are Yellowjackets and Eden similar?
Both Yellowjackets and Eden follow a soccer team who start to display cult-like behavior and resort to cannibalism after crashing into a remote location. Yellowjackets is a time-hopping thriller about a 1996 New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes into the Canadian wilderness. They are forced to make harrowing decisions to survive the harsh conditions and must grapple with these consequences in their present lives.
As for Eden, the plot is about a US men’s soccer team that crashes on a deserted island after a World Cup match. It’s not just the plot that’s similar, though, but also the setting, characters, mood, themes, and pacing.
The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the complaint states: “In both works, the survivors, which include various players and the coach, among others, must fight for their lives against the harsh elements, starvation through dwindling resources, and the psychological toll of isolation in the form of growing darkness within themselves. As they struggle to survive, tensions rise, alliances form, dark secrets emerge, and moral boundaries are pushed to their limits – blurring the line between good and evil.”
When Yellowjackets debuted on Showtime in 2021, it became the cable channel’s biggest original series in years. With the lawsuit seeking an injunction prohibiting Showtime and the other defendants from further exploiting the series, this could be a major blow to the network if they lost the lawsuit.
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