After landing five nominations at the event, one Oscars 2024 favorite is being accused of plagiarism by the writer of a Black List script.
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Summary
- Simon Stephenson accuses
The Holdovers
of blatant plagiarism, claiming the entire screenplay was copied line-by-line from his script
Frisco
. - The writer provided evidence to the Writers Guild of America, stating that key elements such as story, characters, and dialogue were identical.
- Despite being in the industry for 20 years, Stephenson insists that the similarities between the two screenplays are not a case of mere coincidence.
After becoming a sleeper hit favorite for the Oscars, The Holdovers is being accused of plagiarism.
A new report from Variety reveals that Simon Stephenson, best known for co-writing the story of the 2021 Pixar movie Luca, is accusing The Holdovers of having plagiarized his Black List script entitled Frisco. In an email exchange acquired by the publication, the writer raised his concerns to the Writers Guild of America indicating that the Oscars 2024 favorite blatantly copied his unproduced dramedy project, while another email thread from late February saw him accusing the movie of taking “the meaningful entirety” of his script, including its “story, characters, structure, scenes, dialogue“, which he described as “brazen“. See Stephenson’s various email accusations below:
I’ve encountered a credits-related issue on quite a high profile WGA-covered project. The evidence The Holdovers screenplay has been plagiarized line-by-line from Frisco is genuinely overwhelming – anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word “brazen.”
I can demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that the meaningful entirety of the screenplay for a film with WGA-sanctioned credits that is currently on track to win a screenwriting Oscar has been plagiarized line-by-line from a popular unproduced screenplay of mine. I can also show that the director of the offending film was sent and read my screenplay on two separate occasions prior to the offending film entering development. By ‘meaningful entirety’ I do mean literally everything — story, characters, structure, scenes, dialogue, the whole thing. Some of it is just insanely brazen: many of the most important scenes are effectively unaltered and even remain visibly identical in layout on the page.
I’ve been a working writer for 20 years – in my native UK before I came to the US – and so I’m very aware that people can often have surprisingly similar ideas and sometimes a few elements can be ‘borrowed’ etc. This just isn’t that situation. The two screenplays are forensically identical and riddled with unique smoking guns throughout.
Developing…
Source: Variety
The Holdovers
The Holdovers is a comedy-drama film starring Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, a prep academy professor hated by peers and students alike. Stuck at the academy for the holidays with no family or friends to visit, he finds himself in the company of a bright-but-troublemaking young student named Angus and the school’s head cook, Mary. Together, the three will create a makeshift family as they bond during the holiday season.
- Director
- Alexander Payne
- Release Date
- November 10, 2023
- Studio(s)
- MiraMax , Gran Via
- Distributor(s)
- Focus Features
- Writers
- David Hemingson
- Cast
- Paul Giamatti , Da’Vine Joy Randolph , Dominic Sessa , Carrie Preston
- Runtime
- 133 Minutes
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
