Subscription streaming giant Netflix has settled its Black Mirror: Bandersnatch lawsuit with children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure. The British dystopian sci-fi program currently has five seasons available on Netflix, along with a 2018 film by series creator Charlie Brooker, called Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
With Bandersnatch, Brooker decided to put a Black Mirror episode's main character into the viewers' hands. Utilizing an interactive element that allowed viewers to determine what the film’s protagonist did next, Bandersnatch’s fun and immersive experience made it an instant hit. Unfortunately for Brooker and Netflix, Chooseco - the owners of the well-known children’s book series, Choose Your Own Adventure, claimed that the film violated their trademark and filed a lawsuit. In response, Netflix admitted that while they had been in contact with Chooseco, that project had nothing at all to do with what became Bandersnatch.
After much time and effort, the lawsuit between Netflix and Chooseco has reached a settlement. According to THR, the dispute has been solved with the court’s currently undisclosed terms agreed upon by both parties. There has been one aspect of the case made public, however. The lawsuit’s presiding judge, William Sessions III, decided to forget that he ever questioned the possibility that Bandersnatch deliberately utilized the Choose Your Own Adventure concept for its film. The new ruling doesn’t appear to have any impact on either Black Mirror or Chooseco’s ability to continue to create interactive productions.
The interactive element in Bandersnatch, while exciting for viewers, ultimately didn’t offer any great outcomes for the film’s protagonist. As expectedly dark as the TV series, Bandersnatch focused its emphasis on technology and how that technology can consume the lives of those it encounters, a standard concept in the world of Black Mirror. Despite Chooseco’s claim that Netflix had violated trademark rights, Bandersnatch's interactive storytelling offers a much different take on the sort of storytelling tactics that the Choose Your Own Adventure series provides. For starters, Bandersnatch viewers’ choices are not about controlling the film’s protagonist Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead).
When all is said and done, the Chooseco/Netflix lawsuit seems a little silly. After all, simply because the Choose Your Own Adventures stories utilize a concept that allowed readers to plot their own story shouldn’t mean that only Chooseco can use the device. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch proves there are other ways to include instant viewer input into a film, and by doing so, it has helped usher in an entirely new storytelling method. Chooseco does excellent work, but its focus has predominantly been on children over the years, whereas Bandersnatch’s success proves that adults want to control (at least some of) the films they view.
Source: THR