Next Wednesday, December 3, Apple TV was due to release The Hunt, a French thriller starring Benoît Magimel and Mélanie Laurent. But it now seems like that isn’t going to happen; with the past week, plagiarism accusations surfaced, and the trailer has been removed from Apple TV’s official YouTube channel, and materials related to the show have been pulled from the streamer’s press site.
Apple Insider was the first English-language outlet to report the news, which reports that The Hunt was actually pulled on November 20 over its similarities to Douglas Fairbairn’s 1973 Shoot and the 1976 film based upon it. Citing French journalist Clément Garin, Apple Insider reports that the series follows the structure of the original novel, but without the rights to do so. The plot of both stories concerns a group of friends who go hunting but find themselves hunted by another group of hunters; one of the friends is injured but the rest try to keep the incident quiet as they continue on with their lives. The outlet suspects that the plagiarism was discovered at the last minute leaving Apple and production company Gaumont with little choice to hide any reference to the show to limit their liability. Actors and production staff are also reportedly barred from talking about the project.
In fairness, this does sound like how Apple TV would handle this kind of issue. While not a plagiarism issue, the streamer pulled its Jessica Chastain series The Savant three days before its planned premiere over potential connections to the real-world death of Charlie Kirk earlier this year. The following day, Chastain shared on social media that she was “not aligned” with Apple’s decision and wrote, “I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish this show wasn’t so relevant, unfortunately it is.” There is no release date on the calendar for The Savant as of this writing, though it is still listed on Apple’s press site as “Coming Soon.”
