Oscar-nominated film The Holdovers has been accused of plagiarism by a screenwriter the day before the award ceremony.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place tonight (March 10) at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles with comedian Jimmy Kimmel serving as the evening’s host.
Director Alexander Payne's comedy-drama The Holdovers is nominated for five trophies: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay.
The film stars Paul Giamatti as a jaded middle-aged teacher at an all-male boarding school, who is forced to supervise a 15-year-old student during the holiday break with only the help of the cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph).
Watch the Holdover's trailer below:
It was shockingly revealed on the eve of the award ceremony that the film has been accused of being "plagiarized line-by-line" from a decade-old screenplay for a film that was never produced.
Simon Stephenson, best known for working on hit movies Luca and Paddington 2, made the bombshell allegations in emails to the Writer’s Guild of America that were obtained by Variety.
The screenwriter alleges that Payne likely read a script for his movie Frisco - which was a drama about a weary middle-aged children’s doctor and the 15-year-old patient he is made to look after.
The unproduced movie's screenplay caused commotion around Hollywood in 2013, when it featured at Number 3 on the annual Black List, which assembles the industry’s most popular unproduced screenplays.
According to the publication, Stephenson wrote that he was able to show "beyond any possible doubt" that the "meaningful entirety" of The Holdovers screenplay had been stolen from his work.
He also said he would be able to compile proof that Payne had been sent and read his screenplay "on two separate occasions prior to the offending film entering development," with the dates being 2013 and then later in 2019.
"By 'meaningful entirety' I do mean literally everything," Stephenson explained, per the outlet. "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."
Stephenson, who has worked as a professional writer for the past 20 years, stated he was mindful of the fact that it was possible for people to have "surprisingly similar" ideas and that on occasions, certain elements could be "borrowed".
"This just isn’t that situation. The two screenplays are forensically identical and riddled with unique smoking guns throughout," the screenwriter concluded.
A WGA associate counsel told him it was not a guild issue and referred him to a Los Angeles law firm, telling Stephenson: "A lawsuit remains the most viable option under these circumstances".
