Obviously the judge agreed with these arguments, unburdening The Shape of Water from this legal cloud.
Fox’s lawyers also argued the universality of these kinds of stories, citing movies like Free Willy and E.T. where scientists want to do inhumane experiments on lovable creatures.
Despite those surface similarities, the Fox lawyers argued that these works are entirely different because while the play is about the horrors of animal experimentation, it does not contain the love story or a mute protagonist or the god-like powers of the amphibian man.
The copyright infringement claim argued that Guillermo del Toro brazenly copied elements from Let Me Hear You Whisper, a play that tells the story of a cleaning woman at a laboratory who tries to rescue an intelligent talking dolphin from cruel experiments.