Sept. 17 (UPI) — A Montana photographer has filed a lawsuit against Netflix for allegedly using one of his photos without permission in two of its productions.
Sean R. Heavey says Netflix used his photo titled “The Mothership,” which shows a giant storm cloud in the Montana sky, in “Stranger Things” and “How it Ends.”
The photo won international acclaim in 2010 and has been published on numerous websites.
In a Facebook post from earlier this year, Heavey posted a side-by-side comparison of “The Mothership” next to an image from episode 3 of “Stranger Things.”
“So I would like to ask you all once again … Do you think the cloud in the top ‘Stranger Things’ image is my photograph?” he wrote. “Netflix is saying the one they used is ‘a similar cloud formation’ and I can’t copyright storm clouds in general. But I call BS because it looks to me to not be ‘a similar cloud formation’ but MY cloud formation.”
Earlier this month, Heavey filed his lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Great Falls. The Great Falls Tribune reported that the lawsuit emphasizes the amount of time and work Heavey put into creating the image, which involved following the storm and then combining panoramic photos to show the full scale of the storm cloud.
According to the complaint, Heavey’s photo is “the result of numerous sequences of experimentation by Sean with various framing, exposure, shutter speed, and movement options.”
