The film “The Holdovers” has been accused of plagiarism by the screenwriter of the film “Luca”.

“retainers”

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Alexander Payne Award contender Retainers It faces controversy on the eve of the Academy Awards, where David Hemmingson's screenplay was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

The film stars Paul Giamatti as a cynical boarding school teacher who stumbles upon caring for a teenage boy (Dominic Cessa) during Christmas break. according to Luca And Paddington 2 By writer Simon Stevenson, the screenplay has striking similarities to the screenplay for the unproduced film Frisco, about a cynical pediatrician who finds himself caring for a teenage patient over a period of days. Frisco's screenplay has had some notoriety, as in 2013 it made it onto the Blacklist, which honors the best unproduced screenplays of the year.

Stevenson prepared documentation comparing the scenes from both scenarios as well as their general structure. diverse, which posted one of those documents on Saturday, said Stephenson sent it to the WGA in January to ask for help. According to one document, Payne was sent drafts of the script in 2013 and 2019 in an attempt to convince him to participate in the project.

“The screenplay for THE HOLDOVERS has been copied in its entirety from the screenplay for FRISCO by transfer,” the document says. “This includes the entire story of a fresco script, its structure, sequencing, scenes, sub-beats within scenes, line-by-line action and dialogue material, characters, arcs, relationships, theme and tone. Most of this has been done live, and there are a large number of unique elements The highly specific ones created in FRISCO are easily and unambiguously recognizable in THE HOLDOVERS.

Among the similarities highlighted by Stevenson was an early moment in which the protagonist is summoned to his boss's office and dressed down because of the injustice of a politician. (in RetainersThe son of a US senator is let down by Giamatti's character. in FrescoThe novel's protagonist describes a US congresswoman, who was the mother of a patient, as an idiot.)

Hollywood Reporter I contacted representatives of the WGA, Payne, Hemingson and Stephenson. (Both Payne and Stevenson are repped by CAA, while Hemingson is at WME.)

Retainers Script vs Artist, band leader, Anatomy of a fall, Artist, band leader, May December And Past life For Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, the voting period for which ended late last month. Late last year, Payne and Hemmingson spoke THR About the origins of the film. Payne said he had long wanted to make a film set in a boarding school, while Hemingson wrote an unproduced television pilot set at a school. The pilot script caught Payne's attention, and he contacted the screenwriter.

Hemmingson recalls receiving that call from Payne: “I thought it was a prank call at first until I saw the Omaha area code and realized it was actually Alexander Payne.” And he said, “I have this movie I want to do about this weird, socially challenged professor who's stuck in school over Christmas — would you be interested in writing it?”