You’ve probably heard of Yellowjackets, the Showtime series that is gearing up to release its third season after two incredibly popular outings. What you may not have heard about is the 2015 thriller Eden, whose creators have recently claimed was the wrongful basis of Yellowjackets.
A new lawsuit was filed on Nov. 14 in New York Federal Court, and it suggests that Shyman Madiragu’s survival thriller Eden had its copyright infringed upon by Yellowjackets, which aired its first episodes in November of 2021.
According to the legal documents (cited by Deadline), the lawsuit covers all bases alleging that both Lionsgate — the production company behind the series — and Yellowjackets creators, Ahsley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, stole ideas from the movie that constituted basically everything that makes the show what it is.
The filing claims there are similarities between the two projects’ plot, setting, mood, pace, story, characters, sequence of events, themes, and dialogue, to the point where they claim the two projects are identical. The filing says those involved will prove that this evidence is substantial enough to illustrate that Yellowjackets knowingly plagiarized Eden.
The goal of the lawsuit is to seek damages for the alleged copyright infringement and to have an injunction put into place that would stop the Yellowjackets producers from further “exploiting” the film. The Eden team has requested a jury trial.
While at first you might be thinking this lawsuit is bizarre, a closer look at the details will reveal some definite similarities between the two projects. Eden is a film that follows the United States men’s national soccer team after their plane crashes and lands on a tropical island. The remaining survivors are then forced to go to extreme lengths to survive. Yellowjackets, meanwhile, shares a similar premise around a high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in a Canadian forest.
While there are similarities, there are also some notable differences. The most prominent divergence is the fact that Yellowjackets dives into supernatural themes while Eden doesn’t. Also, Yellowjackets takes place in two different timelines, following the characters as they deal with the crash, and also years later as the trauma remains.
But there’s a whole other fact that you might be missing here. Yellowjackets is inspired by a true story that happened in 1972, when a plane crashed in the Andes leaving 16 survivors. Many of these individuals were members of a Uruguayan amateur rugby team and they were left in the wild for 72 days before being rescued. It is unclear if this same story inspired Eden, though the premise is undoubtedly similar.
Of course, the argument could be made that any survival-type project following the aftermath of a plane crash could be considered an infringement (Castaway, The Mountain Between Us), but it’s the added layer of the shared sports team survivors that has seemingly caught the attention of the Eden team.
It remains to be seen what will come of this lawsuit. However, neither Lionsgate nor Showtime has yet commented on the filing. A third season of Yellowjackets has undergone production after being delayed due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and it is expected to air in early 2025. If you’re interested in seeing just how similar Eden is, you can find a trailer for the movie on YouTube.