Netflix recently announced that Millie Bobby Brown, the star actress who exploded onto the scene for her performance in Stranger Things, would star in Enola Holmes, with the actress playing the younger sister of famed detective Sherlock Holmes. But Netflix’s plans have certainly run amuck as the studio is facing a lawsuit from the estate of the man who created Sherlock, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Doyle’s estate is claiming that the studio’s newest original movie offering is violating copyright laws, as the complaint states “copyright infringement arises from defendants unauthorized copying of original creative expression by [Conan Doyle] in copyrighted Sherlock Holmes stories.” While most of Sherlock Holmes stories rest in the public domain, meaning that no studio or creative body would have to receive permission or pay for rights to produce content based off of the works, multiple Sherlock Holme’s stories are still in possession of the estate.
In fact, the final ten Holmes stories do not rest in the public domain and now the estate is seeking a jury trial and that the studio pay the estate unspecified damages. It is not verified that the estate’s claim has full validity though, as Netflix’s Enola Holmes movie is actually based on a series of books by author Nancy Springer, of whom the title character is her own original creation.
We will have to wait to see how this case will resolve itself, but audiences eagerly anticipating the movie should expect a wait as the legal process is long and costly and it’s hard to imagine the movie entering production without their being closure in the suit.
Leave a Comment