Alexander Payne, the director of the Oscar-nominated comedy-drama The Holdovers (2023) has been accused of plagiarism by screenwriter Simon Stephenson, according to Variety.
It is reported that an email sent from Stephenson, whose credits include Paddington 2 (2017) and Luca (2021), to the Writers Guild of America’s Senior Director of Credits Lesley Mackey complains that The Holdovers plagiarises Stephenson’s screenplay Frisco.
The allegations come before 96th Academy Awards later tonight, where The Holdovers is nominated for five awards, including Best Original Screenplay.
The Holdovers follows a professor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England preparatory school in the 1970s who forms an unexpected bond with a student during the Christmas break.
Stephenson’s Frisco tells the story of “a world-weary middle-aged children’s doctor and the 15-year-old patient he gets stuck looking after,” according to the report.
The screenplay for The Holdovers is credited to David Hemingson. However, Stephenson claims that Payne was sent and read the script for Frisco in both 2013 and 2019.
Alleged similarities between Frico and The Holdovers cited by Stephenson include the “story, structure, sequencing, scenes, sequential sub-beats within scenes, line-by-line substance of action and dialogue, characters, arcs, relationships, theme and tone.”
Stephenson said “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.”
Frisco, written by Stephenson in 2012, has placed as high as number three on Hollywood’s ‘Black List’ of the best unproduced screenplays. IMDb notes that the film is currently “in development.”
According to Variety, Payne and Hemingson have so far declined to comment on the accusations.
