When the 2017 film “Happy Death Day” hit theaters, social-media users noticed the movie’s murderous villain looked familiar—he’d been terrifying local basketball fans for years, they said.
The resemblance forced King Cake Baby, the New Orleans Pelicans’ freakish mascot, to take to twitter “to publicly deny that (King Cake Baby) was actually cast or licensed as the Happy Death Day mask,” the mascot’s creator alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday (Feb. 12).
With the film’s sequel “Happy Death Day 2U” set to premiere Wednesday, Jonathan Bertuccelli, the mascot’s creator and majority owner and president of Algiers-based Studio 3 Inc., is suing the production companies involved in both films.
The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Orleans, alleges copyright infringement by Universal Studios LLC, Universal City Studios Productions LLLP, independent production company Blumhouse Productions LLC and subsidiary or “loan company” Tree Falls in the Woods LLC. The lawsuit also names as defendants John and Jane Does 1-50, “currently unknown” people or entities with financial interests in the films.
Alleging that the films used King Cake Baby’s likeness in a pivotal role and without Bertuccelli’s permission, he is seeking half of the net proceeds from both films, along with a 50 percent interest in all future distributions.
The lawsuit includes a request for an expedited hearing for an injunction to safeguard proceeds, a move aimed at ensuring proceeds from the sequel are available to Bertuccelli should he prevail in court.
“Happy Death Day,” filmed on the campus of Loyola University and set at a fictional Louisiana university, is what’s known as a “rewinding thriller,” in which the heroine keeps reliving the day she is killed. The film generated roughly $125 million in profits, according to the lawsuit.
“Happy Death Day 2,” also filmed partially at Loyola, cost $9 million to make and is also expected to make “significant money” upon its wide release Wednesday.
The 37-page lawsuit offers a primer in all things King Cake Baby, showing the mascot’s evolution from artist sketches to the rendition now seen stalking Pelicans fans. In making a case against the movies’ makers, the documents offer a peek into Bertuccelli’s process and thinking in creating the mascot, which has garnered acclaim as one of the creepiest in the sports world.
Bertuccelli has been creating “expressive display art sculptures” and parade floats for more than 30 years; he began creating King Cake Baby in 2009 as a commissioned “walking head mascot” for the Pelicans, then the New Orleans Hornets. The mascot, also referred to in the lawsuit as “eye-popping expressionist art,” is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as a sculptural work.
Bertuccelli designed King Cake Baby “to project both conflicting emotion in KCB’s (King Cake Baby’s) appearance and to induce conflicting reaction to KCB.”
That goal was achieved, the lawsuit states, when the mascot debuted in spring of 2010. King Cake Baby “immediately connected with audiences exactly as it was intended by the artist; evoking enjoyment, fear, curiosity, love and even hatred,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit cites a range of television shows, from NBA broadcasts to “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” as well as social-media posts, including a tweet by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and artist Michael Peter Balzary AKA “Flea,” in establishing the mascot’s national fame.
The “Happy Death Day” masked villain and King Cake Baby are “virtually identical in a side-by-side comparison” and in both thrillers the murderous character “is used to portray a range of emotional and mental cues that derive from KCB’s intended design,” the lawsuit accuses.
The lawsuit includes pages of detailed side-by-side comparisons of King Cake Baby and the “Happy Death Day” killer.
Filmmakers tried to use slight variations to conceal the work’s inspiration, but the “ordinary observer” sees them as the same, the lawsuit alleges, citing tweets and reddit threads noting the similarities between the two.
Comments noting the resemblance between King Cake Baby and his villainous twin continue as the sequel nears release, the lawsuit claims.
“Y’all really gave the King Cake Baby his own horror movie?” one Twitter user posted this month along with a clip previewing the sequel.
The answer to that question, now up to a court to determine, is pending.
As of late Tuesday, a spokesperson for Universal Studios had not returned an emailed request for comment.
Laura McKnight covers crime and breaking news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
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