Last week, we reported that Sesame Workshop—the company that produces Sesame Street—had filed a lawsuit against Melissa McCarthy’s raunchy puppet movie The Happytime Murders over its tagline, “No sesame, all street.” The family-friendly puppet people were worried that the R-rated movie’s prolonged gags about puppet semen would confuse kids who saw the tagline and didn’t understand that it wasn’t really affiliated with Elmo and Big Bird. Sesame Workshop didn’t want to shut the movie down or anything, as every grown-up should be able to enjoy watching some puppets get slaughtered, it just wanted The Happytime Murders to stop playfully referencing Sesame Street in its marketing.
According to Entertainment Weekly, though, a judge in New York has ruled in favor of The Happytime Murders after determining that Sesame Workshop hadn’t effectively proven that anyone was actually confused or offended by the tagline. In other words, the judge figured that it should be obvious to everyone that the movie about violent puppet murders and graphic puppet sex has nothing to do with Sesame Street. Happytime production company STX Entertainment posted some tweets about the ruling, saying it wanted to honor The Jim Henson Company’s legacy without trying to imply any connection between its movie and that company.