Fail, Satan: The Satanic Church Is Suing THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA For $50M
Most people don't know this, but Satan - Lord of Darkness, Prince of The Shadows, beholden to neither God nor Man's law and inspiration for all of our most decadent and wicked sins - is very litigious. If you do something to piss him or his followers off, you will definitely be hearing about it from his lawyers, a fact which Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is learning the hard way this week.
Says Variety:
"The Satanic Temple made good on its threat to sue Netflix and Warner Bros. on Thursday, filing a $50 million copyright suit accusing them of ripping off the temple’s statue of Baphomet to fuel “Satanic panic” in the Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.”
Ah, yes, the Satanic Temple's famed Baphomet statue, created several years back (to the tune of $100,000, according to the Temple) to be placed outside an Oklahoma courthouse, where a monument to the Ten Commandments still stood. The idea, as we understand it, was to use the Baphomet statue to challenge the state's inclusion of an explicitly Christian monument outside a state courthouse. The Oklahoma Supreme Court saw the Temple's point and had the Ten Commandments monument taken down before they might be forced to display the Baphomet statue, as well. It has since appeared in Arkansas, under similar circumstances.
To be fair, the statue that appears in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina does bear a striking resemblance to the one created by the Satanic Temple. And yes, if the Temple shelled out $100,000 to design said statue, it probably would've been nice for someone associated with Sabrina to have asked the Temple's permission before co-opting that design for their show. All of that said, this also strikes us as fairly lame. Feels like one of those, "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole" moments. Your mileage may vary.
Anyway, neither Netflix nor Warner Bros. are currently commenting on the lawsuit, but we're curious to see how this whole thing shakes out. Stay tuned for further updates on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as they become available.
