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Entertainment
Ahead of Sunday’s Oscars, Best Picture nominee “The Holdovers” has been accused of being “plagiarized line by line” from a decade-old script for a movie written about a decade ago that was never made, according to a report.
Simon Stephenson, best known for working on the popular films “Luca” and “Paddington 2,” made the explosive accusations in emails to the Writer’s Guild of America. which were obtained by Variety.
The screenwriter alleges in the letters that “The Holdovers” director Alexander Payne likely read a script for his eerily similar film “Frisco” when it toured Hollywood in 2013 on the industry’s “hit list” of most similar scripts, where reached its peak. at number three.
“The evidence that the remains script has been plagiarized line by line from ‘Frisco’ is genuinely overwhelming: anyone who looks at even the briefest sample almost invariably uses the word ‘shameless,'” Stephenson wrote in the email he sent. The WGA director credits Lesley Mackey, after speaking with him about the films’ similarities.
“Frisco” is a drama that follows a grumpy children’s hospital worker who gets stuck taking care of his 15-year-old student, similar to how Paul Giamatti plays a high school classics teacher who spends Christmas vacation as a troubled teenager, played by Dominic. Sessa and the school cafeteria manager, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
Stephenson meticulously compared the two films scene by scene, as well as important sequences and dialogue.
He claims Payne revised the Frisco script in 2013 and revisited it in late 2019 before approaching first-time writer David Hemingson about “The Holdovers.” Hemingson also received production credits on the film.
In a Feb. 25 writing to the WGA board of directors, Stephenson wrote: “I can demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that the significant entire script of a film with WGA-approved credits that is currently on track to win a Oscar for the screenplay has been plagiarized. Signing of a popular unproduced script of mine.
“I can also prove that the director of the offending film was sent and read my script on two separate occasions before the film went into development,” he continued.
Stephenson claims there are only five parts of “The Holdovers” that are not in his “Frisco” script, including, ironically, a backstory about someone who gets away with plagiarism, Variety reported.
“By ‘meaningful integrity’ I mean literally everything: story, characters, structure, scenes, dialogue, everything. Some things are incredibly blatant: many of the most important scenes are effectively unaltered and even remain visibly identical in the page layout.”
A WGA associate attorney told him it’s not a guild issue and referred him to a Los Angeles law firm, but told Stephenson that “a lawsuit remains the most viable option under these circumstances.”
“The Holdovers” is nominated for five awards at this year’s Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay.
Stephenson and Payne declined to comment to Variety and The Post could not immediately reach them.
Payne previously won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay for his films “Sideways” (2005) and “The Descendants” (2012).