SyFy denies any rip-off of Amber Benson's 'Drones' in new series 'Human Relations'

In a previous news story, we reported that Amber Benson's film Drones was eerily similar to the new series Human Relations on SyFy Channel's Fall lineup.

On July 31st on her blog, Amber Benson insinuated that the unlikely similarities between her indie film Drones and the new SyFy Channel series Human Relations were way too coincidental, especially since SyFy.com itself had aired the trailer to Drones back in January 2010.

"Human Relations is an original concept that was brought to us by Scott Prendergast, a respected independent filmmaker," Syfy said in a statement issued to the media only in the past few days. "It was in no way inspired by Drones. We pride ourselves in our professional integrity and take suggestions of plagiarism very seriously."

"Our initial concern was if there was any truth to this," SyFy's Mark Stern said to www.airlockalpha.com. "If that were the case, that would be an important thing for us to know. I talked to Scott, and he laid out the genesis of the idea, and it’s clearly his, that he had been working on it for years. And that’s all we needed to know."

Prendergast maintained from the beginning that he first started developing what would evolve into Human Relations in 1995 when he worked in an office in Chicago. The idea was shelved for some time, but then resurrected a couple years ago after he got his feet wet in independent films like Kabluey and then pitched it to Syfy last January.

"I didn’t feel like he was our enemy," Benson said of writer Scott Prendergast. "If there is an enemy at all, it’s Syfy. They’ve been guilty of that in the past, you know, where they like an idea, and they tweak it a little bit and reuse it. I didn’t want that to be the case for Drones."

"To be honest, if we wanted to do a television series based on her film, we would’ve approached her to do that," Stern said. "There is no reason for us to go off and create our own version of this. Why wouldn’t we have just approached her about doing it, instead of saying, ’We need to go find Scott Prendergast and have him adapt it."

"Without getting into too much detail on Human Relations, it does get very outrageous in terms of the approach, and that’s why we likened it to Men In Black," Stern said. "It gets a lot more alienish — is that a word ? For me, watching Amber’s movie, it’s a little more Office Space. It’s a smart, satiric office comedy, but Human Relations is much broader than that."

"I feel badly for Scott," Stern said. "It’s horrible for Scott knowing he didn’t rip [Benson] off, and have his name dragged through this mud. He’s worked his ass off on this thing for years."

He also has some sympathy for Benson as well. "I certainly understand her concern, especially if this feels like there must be someone looking over her shoulder, but that is absolutely not the case here," Stern said. "We don’t work that way, and it didn’t happen here."

Who knows. All I know is that everything sucks.