Apple TV Thriller ‘The Hunt’ Returns After Plagiarism Delay
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Following a months-long delay over claims of plagiarism, Apple TV’s new thriller series The Hunt is finally available for streaming, following its premiere on Wednesday.
Apple announced the series back in September 2025, scheduling it to debut on its streaming service on December 3. However, in late November it was announced that the series had been pulled from the service and would not be arriving as scheduled.
While Apple offered no reason for the abrupt cancellation, word soon got out that the series had been pulled over claims that director, creator, and screenwriter Cédric Anger had stolen the plot from a novel called Shoot, written by Douglas Fairbairn.
The book was first published in 1973 and translated into French the following year under the title La Traque — French for “The Stalking” or “The Hunt.” The original novel was later adapted into a 1976 film, which starred Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine.
Both The Hunt and Shoot tell the story of a group of friends who went hunting in the wilderness, only to find that they are the prey, as they are attacked by another group of hunters. While the group escapes with only minor injuries, the friends can’t shake the feeling that they’re still being stalked, even after their return to civilization.
Franck (Benoît Magimel) and his longtime friends enjoy spending their weekends hunting together, but one Sunday, they come across another group of hunters who start targeting them without explanation. When one of their party is shot, Franck’s friends strike back, sending an attacker to the ground. Barely managing to escape, the four friends keep the event a secret. Franck tries to go back to his life as usual alongside his wife Krystel (Mélanie Laurent), but in the next few days, he starts to feel like he and his friends are being watched, or worse, tracked by hunters who are now hell-bent on revenge.
While many television series are based on novels — Bosch and Rizzoli & Isles come to mind — as well as films, the problem with The Hunt was that Anger had failed to inform anyone involved in the project that his series wasn’t an original work, but was instead based on the 1973 novel. The intellectual property theft wasn’t discovered until the last minute, after the series had already been completed and was scheduled to debut on Apple’s streaming service.
Once the problem was uncovered, Apple and the show’s production company, Gaumont, quickly made moves to limit their legal exposure. All traces of the show were quickly removed from the Apple TV streaming service and website, as were promotional materials and trailers from streaming sites like YouTube.
Apple and Gaumont reportedly conferred with their legal teams to decide whether to sue Anger for presenting the series as an original work, likely considering ways to recover at least some of the costs of producing the series. It was also reported that they were also working behind the scenes to secure a deal with the original creators of the work that would allow them to show the series at a later date.
Thankfully, the lawyers seem to have worked out the necessary details, as The Hunt returned to the Apple TV roster in February, with Gaumont telling Deadline that it had immediately taken “the necessary steps to identify the rights holders, and obtain the required authorizations.” Notably, while Anger retains his credit for directing five of the six episodes, the “Creator” credit that was there in November no longer appears below his name.
As noted by MacTrast, the first two episodes of The Hunt are now available for streaming, with a third episode set to debut on Wednesday, March 11.
