M. Night Shyamalan Cleared in $81 Million ‘Servant’ Lawsuit Trial

M. Night Shyamalan was cleared of copyright infringement in the $81 million lawsuit over the Apple TV+ series Servant, with a jury unanimously ruling in favor of the director Friday.

In 2020, Italian director Francesca Gregorini sued Shyamalan and the streaming service for copyright infringement, alleging that Servant, which ran for four seasons on Apple TV+, stole elements from her 2013 movie The Truth About Emanuel.

The lawsuit went to trial last Tuesday, during which Shyamalan took the stand in his own defense. During testimony, the director said he and his co-creators had never seen nor heard of The Truth About Emanuel until the lawsuit was filed, and any similarities were “clearly, 100%, a misunderstanding,” Variety reports.

“This accusation is the exact opposite of everything I do and everything I try to represent,” Shyamalan said in court. “I would have never allowed it. None of the people that I work with would ever do anything like that.”

The jury — after watching both the three episodes of the supernatural Servant and entirety of the coming-of-age drama The Truth About Emanuel — deliberated Friday and ultimately found Shyamalan and Apple TV+ were not liable in the lawsuit, ruling in favor of the filmmaker and putting an end to the five-year legal ordeal.

As Variety notes, a federal judge previously threw out the lawsuit, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in 2022, finding the two works — both involving a woman tasked with caring for a doll that’s an emotional substitute for a dead child — were “substantially similar.” After Apple’s motion for summary judgment was denied in November, the case was ordered to start trial this week.