Simon Stephenson, who contributed to 'Luca' and 'Paddington 2' and 'Wonka,' claims that the Oscar-nominated 'The Holdovers' was heavily plagiarized from his script, 'Frisco.' The film has five Oscar nominations, including for Best Original Screenplay, and the script is credited to David Hemingson.
In an email to the Writers Guild, reported by Variety and confirmed by Stephenson, the British writer states that the evidence of plagiarism in 'The Holdovers' screenplay from 'Frisco' is overwhelming, with many calling it 'brazen.'
Stephenson’s 'Frisco' was included in the Black List in 2013. It tells the story of a pediatric allergist facing a divorce who learns from a terminally ill 15-year-old patient during a trip to a conference in San Francisco.
'The Holdovers' is about a boarding school teacher forced to care for a teenager over the holiday break, played by Paul Giamatti.
When Stephenson's script made the Black List, he was with agency UTA, but he is now represented by CAA, the same agency as 'Holdovers' director Alexander Payne. Stephenson claims that Payne had a copy of his script in both 2013 and 2019. An email from UTA’s Geoff Morley, reported by Variety, indicated that Payne read the script in 2013 and liked it, but wasn’t interested in producing or directing it.
In 2019, the project was at Netflix, and it was brought to Payne by executive Lisa Nishimura. Later, an email from Brightstar’s John Woodward to Stephenson and producer Tanya Seghatchian mentioned that Payne had read it but that it was not what he was looking for, also noting that Netflix’s interest in the project was based on Alexander.
The credited writer for 'The Holdovers,' Hemingson, is an entertainment lawyer and TV writer, with this film being his first feature. Payne mentioned that the inspiration for the film came from a 1935 French film he had seen, and he received a TV pilot from Hemingson set at a boarding school. He then asked him to write the film, and they worked on the story together.
Although Stephenson sought aid from the Writers Guild, he later mentioned in an email that the guild could not help because 'Frisco' was written on spec.
In a detailed document published by Variety, Stephenson argues that the entire screenplay for 'The Holdovers' has been copied from 'Frisco,' including the story, structure, scenes, dialogue, characters, and unique elements. Stephenson claims that a large portion of this is a line-by-line copy.
He also claimed, “The copying is so extensive that it appears likely THE HOLDOVERS was created by importing FRISCO into screenwriting software and directly overwriting the transposition on a line-by-line basis.”
Stephenson admitted in an email to the WGA board, “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.”
Variety was the first to report the news.
