Stranger Things lawsuit dropped days before going to trial

The lawsuit against Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer has been dropped.

Filmmaker Charles Kessler had alleged the creative duo behind the Netflix smash hit series, and announced a lawsuit last April. Now, per a report from Variety, Kessler has dropped the lawsuit against the Duffer brothers, which was slated to go to trial starting this Tuesday.

Kessler released the following statement explaining why his case won't be moving forward.

"After hearing the deposition testimony this week of the legal expert I hired, it is now apparent to me that, whatever I may have believed in the past, my work had nothing to do with the creation of Stranger Things. Documents from 2010 and 2013 prove that the Duffers independently created their show. As a result, I have withdrawn my claim and I will be making no further comment on this matter."

The initial lawsuit alleged that the Duffers had stolen key plot elements from Kessler's 2011 found-footage short Montauk. The film had been picked up by Netflix in 2015, with the intention of turning it into a limited series, The Montauk Project. At one point the series was going to be written and directed by the Duffers, who ended up making Stranger Things instead.

Though Netflix wasn't involved in the lawsuit, it released a statement of its own, which read, in part: "We are glad to be able to put this baseless lawsuit behind us. As we have said all along, Stranger Things is a ground-breaking original creation by the Duffer brothers."

The third season of Stranger Things will be available to binge starting on the 4th of July this year.