NEW YORK • There is no mystery over how Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer came up with the premise of their Netflix series, said film-maker Charlie Kessler, who is accusing the brothers of stealing the idea from his 2012 short film Montauk. He filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles earlier this week and is seeking damages.

Kessler debuted his short at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2012 and later expanded upon it to write a feature movie script called The Montauk Project.

He said he met the brothers at a 2014 party, where they discussed the "script, ideas, story and film".

The dispute adds to similar others in the entertainment industry in recent years.

In February, director Guillermo del Toro was sued by playwright Paul Zindel's estate for "appropriating plot elements from Let Me Hear You Whisper" into del Toro's film The Shape Of Water.

The 1969 play is also about a female custodian who tries to free a sea creature from a laboratory using animals as weapons.

WASHINGTON POST