Hollywood is no newbie in the world of stealing ideas. And Australian model and filmmaker Ben Waddell says they’ve done it to him.
Waddell says he pitched the idea of an eco travel show back in 2018 and that producers all blew him off and said they were uninterested. Fast forward to pandemic summer of 2020 and he gets a big shock.
‘I was sitting on my couch during lockdown and turned on Netflix and it was trending as the second-biggest show in the US,’ Ben said.
‘I fell out of my chair, I was shocked. It was brutal, gut-wrenching.
‘Now they’re making a season 2 in Australia just to kick me when I’m down.’
The Australian presenter and production partner Whitney Smith shot a pilot for ‘Down to Earth with Ben Waddell’ at an eco-retreat in Mexico in July 2017.
Waddell, through his production company Ghost Donkey Media, is now suing Netflix and Down to Earth makers The Nacelle Company.
Lawyers wrote in a concerns notice to both parties that Efron’s show ‘appears to be directly and illegally copied’ from Waddell’s.
Seriously… look at just the title cards:
