Promoter slams ‘Sesame Street’
Adam Fogelson, chairman of STX Films, says a lawsuit could be catastrophic for ‘The Happytime Murders’
Happytime Murders’. The chairman of a company marketing and distributing a new Melissa McCarthy movie says a lawsuit from the makers of Sesame Street could be “potentially catastrophic” for the film’s success if a judge agrees to order the removal of “No Sesame, All Street” from promotional materials including its trailer before its August release.
Adam Fogelson, chairman of STX Films, said the company believed the tagline was a “humorous, pithy way” to let viewers know that The Happytime Murders was not a Sesame Street production.
“It did not occur to us that a viewer would see and hear ‘No Sesame’ and think ‘Yes Sesame,’” Fogelson said in a written declaration filed on Monday in Manhattan federal court.
McCarthy’s movie features the comedian as a human detective investigating grisly puppet murders with a puppet detective.
Fogelson’s declaration accompanied a response by lawyers for STX Productions LLC and its subsidiaries to a lawsuit filed by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organisation behind Sesame Street.
The lawsuit asked a judge to force STX to remove the Sesame reference or anything alluding to its trademarks in promotional materials. It also requested unspecified damages.
Fogelson said if Sesame Workshop succeeds, STX would lose weeks of intheatre marketing.
Fogelson said it would cause “potentially catastrophic, incalculable costs to the success of the film” and possibly devastate it. —