The wait is finally over as the night of The Oscars is just one more night away, and with bated breaths, the general public is waiting to see who takes this prestigious awards home. But before this ceremony could start, The Holdovers, nominated for the Best Screenplay and Best Picture category by The Academy, is facing some serious plagiarism accusations.
These accusations have come from Simon Stephenson, the screenwriter of the hit Disney animated film Luca, who has accused both the director and the screenwriter of this Oscar-nominated film of copying his work page-by-page. But when given a closer look, it seems like he might be reaching for it a bit since the evidence he provides doesn’t make his case water-tight.
Luca Screenwriter Accuses The Holdovers To Be A Plagiarised Product Of His Script
Being nominated for an Academy Award is one of the most prestigious accolades one could boast of, and being nominated for Best Screenplay truly highlights the creative genius of the screenwriters behind that project.
Thus, The Holdovers, one of the nominees of this category in this year’s Academy Awards, claimed to be a plagiarised masterpiece seriously destroys any chance of the creators and writers winning the award.
This accusation comes from screenwriter Simon Stephenson, most famous for his Disney animated hit Luca, who claimed earlier this year that the film starring Paul Giamatti was plagiarised line-by-line from his script for a project titled Frisco.
In fact, the writer also provided a 33-page document (via Variety) with evidence that allegedly confirms screenwriter David Hemingson and director Alexander Payne took his script and made their film around it. The accusation as per the document submitted by Stephenson reads:
“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-line 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 HOLDOVER.”
While this accusation and submission of extensive evidence might prove that the screenwriter has a solid case over the nominated film, the details of those pieces of evidence leave much to be desired to absolutely prove his claims right.
What Is The Evidence Provided Against The Holdovers?
The first and major evidence that doesn’t hit the mark is the general premise of the film, which is a grumpy older character and a troubled teenager forced to spend time together, which apart from this movie, has been countless times before in the industry in many different adaptations.
The second one comes from specific scenes in the film, where Stephenson claimed that they stole the Library scene in the movie from his script, which is unsatisfactory since his description of the scene in his work talks about a silent train vestibule for location, and yet they are claimed to be exactly same since they are ‘A place of silence.’
Along with that, the characters are claimed to be identical with identical introductions and scene recreations, which yet again leaves much to be desired since there have been several examples of films where these sections can match, making them more like recurring patterns in narratives than examples of blatant plagiarism.
The Holdovers, streaming on Peacock.
