In April 2018 , filmmaker Charlie Kessler filed a lawsuit against the Duffer brothers , claiming that they stole his idea behind his short film '' Montauk '' , which featured a similar premise of a missing boy , a nearby military base doing otherworldy experiments , and a monster from another dimension . Kessler directed the film and debuted it at the 2012 Hamptons International Film Festival . During the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival , he pitched his film to the Duffer brothers and later gave them " the script , ideas , story and film " for a larger film idea which he called '' The Montauk Project '' . Kessler contended that the Duffer brothers used his ideas to devise the premise for '' Stranger Things '' and sought a third of the income that they had made from the series . The Duffer brothers ' lawyer stated that they never saw Kessler 's film nor spoke to him regarding it , and that Kessler had no input into their concepts for '' Stranger Things '' . The judge denied summary judgment for the Duffer brothers in April 2019 , allowing Kessler 's suit to proceed to trial . Just before the trial was due to start in May 2019 , Kessler withdrew his lawsuit after hearing the depositions and seeing documents from as early as 2010 which showed him that the Duffers had independently come up with the concept of '' Stranger Things ''
Hamptons International Film Festival
Hamptons International Film Festival
Stranger Things