The Satanic Temple is suing Netflix for $50 million, alleging 'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' copied its statue of a goat-headed deity and implied it was evil
- The Satanic Temple is suing Netflix and Warner Bros. for $50 million, alleging they ripped off its statue of goat-headed deity, Baphomet, in "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina."
- The lawsuit claims the show depicts its antagonists in "stark contrast" to the Temple's beliefs, and that the show implies that the Baphomet statue "stands for evil."
- The Satanic Temple views Satan as a "rebel against God's authority, rather than an evil being," and it advocates for religious freedom, according to the lawsuit.
- The Baphomet with Children statue was designed between 2013 and 2014 in response to a Ten Commandments statue being donated to Oklahoma City, the lawsuit says.
Satanists are suing Netflix and Warner Bros. over their new original series, "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina," for allegedly ripping off its statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed deity.
In a complaint filed Thursday in New York, The Satanic Temple accuses the companies of "copyright infringement, false designation of original, false description; and forbidden dilution under trademark dilution, and Injury to Business reputation under New York General Business Law."
The Temple seeks no less than $50 million in damages.
Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.
The Satanic Temple threatened legal action last month over the statue, which appears regularly throughout the new series that follows Sabrina and other young witches who get their powers from Satan. The suit alleges Netflix and Warner Bros. copied one particular statue of Baphomet, made by the Temple, and then implied it stood for evil in the series.
The Temple states that its mission is to "encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will."
The Temple says in the lawsuit that it views Satan as a "literary Satan," "meant to be a rebel against God's authority, rather than an evil being." It also claims to advocate for "equal representation where religious monuments are placed on public property" and "legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women's reproductive autonomy," according to its website.
The Temple argues in its lawsuit that "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" depicts its antagonists in "stark contrast" to the Temple's beliefs, and that the show implies that the Baphomet statue "stands for evil."
"Among other morally repugnant actions, the Sabrina Series' evil antagonists engage in cannibalism and forced-worship of a patriarchal deity," the lawsuit claims.
Between 2013 and 2014, the Temple says it created the statue Baphomet with Children in response to a statue of the Ten Commandments being donated to Oklahoma City. The Temple says in the lawsuit that the statue cost approximately $100,000 to develop. It temporarily placed the statue near the Arkansas Capitol building in August to protest another monument of the Ten Commandments, and argued for religious equality.
While Baphomet is a figure that has been used in various ways throughout history, the Temple alleges that Netflix copied its specific iteration.
The "Sabrina" production designer, Lisa Soper, seems to disagree.
The lawsuit cites an interview with Vice in which Soper said, "I think that's kind of a coincidence. When you look at Baphomet, there's really only a couple of statues of him - which, they have their statue, and we've got our statue in the show. If you look at Goya paintings, if you look at a lot of the tarot cards, or the Alistair Crawley iterations of him - because there's hundreds and hundreds of iterations of him, he's always seen with his people around him and it's more of like a father figure kind of thing."
She added: "But it's no different from, in my opinion anyhow ... from any other of the mass amounts of iterations of him that have been around."
The lawsuit argues that this is false, and claims, "Baphomet has never been depicted with two children gazing reverentially at the Sabbatic Goat head."
Baphomet has also generally been depicted with "exposed large voluptuous female breasts, not a male chest," according to the lawsuit.
Below is a comparison, included in the lawsuit, of the Temple's Baphomet with Children statue and the "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" statue:
