The co-founder of the Satanic Temple has revealed his intention to take legal action against Netflix over their new series, ‘Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina’.
Launched last week, just in time for Halloween, ‘Chilling Adventures’ reinvents the Teenage Witch we all got to know in the 90s, planting her in a much darker and more sinister setting than we’re used to, with Sabrina and her witch aunts expected to worship the Dark Lord.
Since the show’s launch, Lucien Greaves has taken issue with the inclusion of a recreation of a monument to Baphomet, a design which he points out is copyrighted, accusing Netflix of “appropriation”.
In a Twitter thread earlier this week, he wrote: “We are taking legal action regarding #TheChillingAdventuresofSabrina appropriating our copyrighted monument design to promote their asinine Satanic Panic fiction.”
He later clarified: “I’m amazed that anybody is confused as to why we would seek legal remedy over Sabrina using our monument. Would they be as understanding of a fictional show that used a real mosque as the HQ of a terrorist cell? A fictional Blood Libel tale implicating real world Jews?”
He also retweeted a post which read: “Imagine the *outcry* if Sabrina featured a baptismal font held on the backs of 12 marble oxen―the kind you find in Mormon temples―and had a character get baptized in blood in said font.
“And as far as I know, the font isn’t even an expressly copyrighted design.”
Lucien later told SFGate: “It’s deeply problematic to us… even if that wasn’t the case we’d be obligated to make a copyright claim because that’s how copyright works.
“It’s distressing on the grounds that you have to worry about that association being made where people will see your monument and not know which preceded the other and thinking that you arbitrarily decided to go with the Sabrina design for your Baphomet monument, which rather cheapens our central icon.”
HuffPost UK has reached out to Netflix for an official response.
‘Chilling Adventures’ stars Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina Spellman, a character originally featured in Archie Comics, popularised in the ‘Sabrina’ TV series by Melissa Joan Hart.
Prior to the show’s debut last week, Melissa and her former co-stars reunited to wish the new cast their “best witches”, ahead of the new series.
However, ‘Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina’ isn’t the only current TV series to have got on the wrong side of Satan-worshippers, with the most recent series of ‘American Horror Story’ also being blasted on The Church Of Satan’s verified Twitter account.
They took issue with the depiction of founder Anton LaVey in ‘Apocalypse’, branding the series “unimpressive”, “boring” and “appropriative”.
