{"id":898365,"date":"2026-10-29T05:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T05:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898365\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T05:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T05:04:16","slug":"alexander-payne-hit-with-copyright-suit-over-the-holdovers-script","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898365\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Payne Hit With Copyright Suit Over ‘The Holdovers’ Script"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA screenwriter sued Alexander Payne<\/a> on Wednesday, alleging that the script for \u201cThe Holdovers<\/a>\u201d was based on his unproduced screenplay set at a children\u2019s hospital.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screenwriter, Simon Stephenson, took his allegations<\/a> to the Writers Guild of America in 2024, but was advised that the union could not adjudicate the issue and was referred to a lawyer. Payne later denied<\/a> the allegations at the Sarajevo Film Festival, saying the claim was \u201cthe stupidest thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Payne, the lawsuit<\/a> names as defendants \u201cHoldovers\u201d screenwriter David Hemingson, producer Mark Johnson, Miramax, Focus Features, and other corporate entities. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe suit contends that there are 46 \u201cmatched incidents\u201d in the plots of the two scripts. As described in the complaint, Stephenson\u2019s script, \u201cFrisco,\u201d tells the story of a dispirited doctor at the hospital who is stuck looking after a precocious teenage patient. The two develop a friendship on a trip to San Francisco, culminating in the doctor\u2019s decision to quit his job and set off on a cross-country trek.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit argues that the similarities with \u201cThe Holdovers\u201d are more than mere coincidence, and that the structure and incidents of \u201cFrisco\u201d \u201cwere meticulously transposed into \u2018The Holdovers,\u2019 with surface cosmetic details changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cScreenplays are often called the blueprint for a film,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cThe Defendants built their film using \u2018Frisco\u2019 as their blueprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStephenson is an experienced screenwriter, with credits on \u201cPaddington 2,\u201d \u201cLuca\u201d and \u201cThe Electrical Life of Louis Wain.\u201d He wrote \u201cFrisco\u201d in 2012-13, drawing on his experiences as a pediatrician, and the script was ranked third on the Black List \u2014 the list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Stephenson, his agents sought to interest Payne in making the film, and got him to read it in 2013 and again in 2019. But he passed, the lawsuit states, with his producing partner telling Stephenson\u2019s agent that \u201cPayne did like it but was not interested in prod or directing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe suit alleges that elements of the \u201cFrisco\u201d script made their way into drafts of \u201cThe Holdovers\u201d via Payne\u2019s input to Hemingson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A screenwriter sued Alexander Payne on Wednesday, alleging that the script for \u201cThe Holdovers\u201d was based on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[74176,88,309472],"class_list":["post-898365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alexander-payne","tag-entertainment","tag-the-holdovers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}