Oscar nominated film accused of plagiarism hours before ceremony

Accusations say that the film has been plagiarised “line-by-line”.

The comedy-drama, which stars Paul Giamatti, is up for five awards on Oscars night, including Best Actor for Giamatti and, more importantly, Best Original Screenplay.

However, Scottish screenwriter Simon Stephenson has accused the Alexander Payne-directed flick of plagiarising “line by line” from an unproduced screenplay of his.

Stephenson, whose credits include Pixar film Luca, refers to his screenplay for Frisco, which is about a weary middle-aged doctor who is made to look after a 15-year-old patient.

The Holdovers follows a similar storyline, where Giamatti plays a grouchy boarding school professor, forced to supervise a 15-year-old student during the holidays.

As well as Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, The Holdovers is also up for Best Editing, Best Picture and star Da’Vine Joy Randolph is up for Best Supporting Actress.

Oscar nominated film accused of plagiarism hours before ceremony

In a story ran by Variety, the publication obtained emails from Stephenson to Writers Guild of America’s senior director of credits Lesley Mackey, where the screenwriter made the accusation.

Stephenson said: “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.’”

Frisco is well known in Hollywood circles as, in 2013, it was one of the hottest properties on the Black List – an annual survey of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays.

According to the publication, Stephenson alleges that The Holdovers director had the script for Frisco in 2013 and again in late 2019.

Stephenson added that the “meaningful entirety” of the Oscar-nominated film’s screenplay had been lifted from his screenplay.

“By ‘meaningful entirety’ I do mean literally everything,” he wrote of the alleged plagiarism.

“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.”

The serious allegations have landed just hours before The Academy Awards are set to take place tonight (10 March) at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

While The Holdovers is one of the most popular contenders, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer starring Best Actor favourite Cillian Murphy has the most nominations this evening.

Poor Things starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Barbie are also up for multiple awards.