Disney's under fire for its scarily familiar Werewolf By Night poster

Disney Plus scandal; an illustration of two wolf heads side by side
(Image credit: Midiankai)

Disney Plus show Werewolf By Night is one of the streaming channel's most creative Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, but sadly, perhaps, the same can't be said for the promotional poster art being used to support the one-off special.

Artist Midiankai has taken to social media to point out the similarities between his own poster artwork of a bold black and white wolf's head created for Dutch rock band Born From Pain, and the poster art for Werewolf By Night, which depicts a bold black and white wolf's head.

"I might be crazy but did marvel just rip me off?" Wrote Midiankai (opens in new tab) on his Twitter feed when he caught sight of the Werewolf By Night poster art. 

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The Estonia-based artist is a regular on Twitter and is well-known in the comic art world for his deft, detailed line art. He told The Direct (opens in new tab) how he believes his artwork, for the song 'Lonewolf' and various related merchandise, was "traced" by the Disney artist using Adobe Illustrator.

He pointed out how the artist could then use sliders to move and soften edges, remove sharp edges and artefacts and claims the jaw was moved to make the open mouth (see below). He says in The Direct article: "The dark notches from the upper teeth remained there. Someone who did it either forgot or didn't pay attention to that detail."

Side by side wolf art comparison

In this side-by-side image Midiankai shares how he believes the Disney artist traced and adjusted his artwork (Image credit: Midiankai)

This isn't the first time Disney has been accused of plagiarism, back in 2018 the media giant was lambasted for its series of posters Solo: A Star Wars Story that looked an awful lot like a series of Sony Music France album covers by Hachim Bahous (opens in new tab) released in 2015.

In the wild world of the internet the tables have also been turned in the past, when it came to light that a Chinese city logo appeared to be a blatant copy of the famous Disney logo

In the case of Midiankai the artist says he's taking legal action against Disney and is in the process of sorting out the Werewolf By Night controversy and Disney appears helpful. If you're concerned about copyrighting your art, read our guide: Five ways prevent your work being copied.

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Ian Dean

Ian Dean is Digital Arts & Design Editor at Creative Bloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and leading video game title Official PlayStation Magazine. In his early career he wrote for music and film magazines including Uncut and SFX. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his love to bring the latest news on NFTs, video game art and tech, and more to Creative Bloq, and in his spare time he doodles in Corel Painter, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5. He's also a keen Cricut user and laser cutter fan, and is currently crafting on Glowforge and xTools M1.