Lawsuit claims depraved puppets defile good name of Sesame Street
The creators of Sesame Street are suing over a new movie trailer that they claim suggests certain puppets live depraved, brutal lives when offstage – snorting hard drugs through licorice straws, selling sexual favours to humans and succumbing to gun violence.
Set for release in August, The Happytime Murders does not actually feature any residents of Sesame Street. But the movie is directed by the son of late Muppets creator Jim Henson and is set in a fictional Los Angeles, where former stars of a children’s puppet show are being gunned down for unknown reasons.
“What really goes down when kids aren’t around,” promises the movie’s official trailer, which prompted Sesame Workshop to sue STX Entertainment in federal court on Thursday, claiming the production company has “diluted and defiled” the beloved Muppets’ reputations.
Sesame claims, STX “seem intent on seeding confusion in the mind of the public as to the association between the movie, Sesame Street, and its beloved Muppets.”
After Sesame Workshop sued on Thursday and demanded a judge force their hand, STX responded with a public statement attributed to “Fred, Esq.” — a puppet lawyer.
STX’s actual human lawyer David Halberstadter wrote Sesame a long letter last week, in which he sounded incredulous that anyone could possibly confuse the wholesome world of Big Bird and Cookie Monster with the puppet dystopia of Happytime.