Just days beforeThe Holdoversattempted to take home an Oscar or two at the 96th Academy Awards, the film was hit with accusations that its screenplay was not as original as it seemed. According toVariety, screenwriterSimon Stephensonhas claimed that his script for a movie entitledFriscoand theAlexander PaynedirectedThe Holdoversare the same in many ways, to the point that it allegedly includes “line by line” plagiarism.
The Holdovers
Stephenson’s case came to light after he contacted the Writers Guild of America with a request to address a “credits-related issue on quite a high profile WGA-covered project.” After a back and forth exchange between the writer and the WGA, Stephenson noted, ““the evidenceThe Holdoversscreenplay has been plagiarized line-by-line fromFriscois genuinely overwhelming – anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word ‘brazen.’”
The Holdovers, starringPaul Giamattiand penned by David Hemingson, has received a lot of attention after winning several big awards, as well as being incontention for Oscars glory. Stephenson’sFriscowas one of 2013’s hottest scripts and appeared on the Black List, but was never picked up for production. However, he claims that director Payne had access toFriscoon two separate occasions before becoming involved in the creation ofThe Holdovers. The most recent of these occasions is said to be in 2019, immediately before Payne and Hemingson began collaborating on their movie.
In one of this emails to the WGA, Stephenson laid out his case, stating:
“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 plagiarised 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.”
Why the Case Against The Holdovers is Not a Simple One.
Despite the gravity of the accusations, the strange and complex world of intellectual property, copyright and plagiarism mean the case againstThe Holdoversis not as cut and dry as it seems. Even with the claims made by Stephenson appearing to be clear, especially as Stephenson had his script, it should haven been easy enough to compare the two projects to discover whether there is a case to answer.
However, the WGA has been cautious in its reply, and noted thatthe addressing of copyright infringementand plagiarism issues in a case such as this are outside their area, and they advised the writer that “a lawsuit remains the most viable option under the circumstances.”
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If Stephenson believes that he has a case to fight, then it looks like it will have to be done via legal proceedings. It appears that there are some people, though, who have been previously aware of the details surrounding the allegations that are doubtful Stephenson would be able to win his case. One of them said:
“This is a case that’s going to have everybody trembling, because you can or soon can just push buttons and put scripts into AI programs and compare everything. They’re hard cases to win. And so there are kind of no winners in them because they’re expensive and ugly, and they spook people. I think that’s probably why Simon is trying to get the WGA to help him.”
There is little doubt that we have not heard the last from this particular case, and it is one that Hollywood will be watching with interest.
