A ‘Paddington 2’ Writer Alleges That ‘The Holdovers’ Was Plagiarized From One Of His Scripts

On Sunday there’s a chance that The Holdovers could nab itself a couple Oscars. Will fake lazy eye guy Paul Giamatti finally get one then go chow down at In-N-Out Burger? Maybe. Da’Vine Joy Robinson, meanwhile, is the frontrunner for the Supporting Actress prize. Another of its five nominations is for Original Screenplay, credited to David Hemingson. But the night before the big show that aspect of the film hit some unexpected controversy, with claims that said script was plagiarized.

In a new report by Variety, Simon Stephenson, whose writing credits include Luca and Paddington 2, is alleging that the “meaningful entirety” of The Holdovers script has been copied from his script for Frisco, a script that lives on the Black List, the annual compilation of beloved unproduced screenplays.

In an email to the Writers Guild of America, Stephenson writes that “the evidence the holdovers screenplay has been plagiarised line-by-line from frisco is genuinely overwhelming — anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word ‘brazen.’”

On the Black List site, Frisco is described as concerning a “forty-something pediatric allergist, who specializes in hazelnut and is facing a divorce, learns lessons in living from a wise-beyond-her-years terminally ill 15-year-old patient when she crashes his weekend trip to a conference in San Francisco.”

The Holdovers, meanwhile, is about a cantankerous private school teacher forced to hang with a non-terminally ill 15-year-old student. Those might sound only superficially similar, but Stephenson writes that the resemblances run deeper:

“The meaningful entirety of the screenplay for THE HOLDOVERS has been copied from the FRISCO screenplay by transposition. This includes the FRISCO screenplay’s entire story, structure, sequencing, scenes, sequential sub-beats within scenes, line-by-iine substance of action and dialogue, characters, arcs, relationships, theme and tone. A majority of this has been done line- for-line, and a large number of unique and highly specific elements created in FRISCO are readily and unequivocally identifiable in THE HOLDOVERS.”

Stephenson adds, “The copying is so comprehensive that it seems likely THE HOLDOVERS was created by importing FRISCO into screenwriting software and directly overtyping the transposition on a line-by-line basis.”

Neither Hemingson nor Holdovers director Alexander Payne has yet to comment publicly on the accusation.

Variety published a breakdown of the similarities between the two scripts.

The Oscars are set to unfold on Sunday, March 10, at 7pm. The Holdovers is still in (some) theaters and streams on Peacock.

(Via Variety)