Why is 'The Holdovers' being accused of plagiarism?

Ahead of the Oscars tonight, nominated film The Holdovers has been accused of plagiarism. But why?

The allegations came from screenwriter Stephen Stephenson, known for films such as Luca and Paddington 2, who accuses The Holdovers director Alexander Payne of plagiarising a decade-old script "line-by-line."

The news broke after Varietyobtained emails from Stephenson to the Writer's Guild of America.

Stephenson alleges that Payne read a script for his movie Frisco in 2013 and 2019, which made No. 3 on the Black List in 2013, an annual survey of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays.

In an email to WGA's director of credits, Lesley Mackey, Stephenson wrote: “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’.”

The Holdovers follows a prep-school classics teacher who spends Christmas break with a student and the school's cafeteria manager. Similarly, Frisco follows a children's hospital worker who has to watch after his 15-year-old patient.

In an attempt to prove his allegations, Stephenson compared the two screenplays scene by scene, looking at important sequences and dialogues.

In an email to the WGA board on Feb 25, Stephenson wrote "I can demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that the meaningful entirety of the screenplay for a film with WGA-sanctioned credits that is currently on track to win a screenwriting Oscar has been plagiarised line-by-line from a popular unproduced screenplay of mine.

"I can also show that the director of the offending film was sent and read my screenplay on two separate occasions prior to the offending film entering development," he continued.

"[M]any of the most important scenes are effectively unaltered and even remain visibly identical in layout on the page."

A WGA associate counsel told him to open a lawsuit, as it is not a guild issue, referring him to a Los Angeles law firm.

The Holdovers has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay.

Payne and Stephenson declined to comment to Variety. However, Stephenson confirmed the authenticity of the emails.

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