Dave Franco and Alison Brie horror 'Together' with perfect Rotten Tomatoes score - controversy explained

Dave Franco and Alison Brie's upcoming horror movie Together has already received high praise from critics, and it's becoming one of the most talked-about films of the year.

The real-life husband and wife play couple Tim and Millie, who "find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other".

"With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh," according to the plot synopsis.

Back in January, Together premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was later sold to film distributors Neon for a reported $17 million.

The film was written and directed by Michael Shanksis and set to be released on July 30 in the US and August 15 in the UK.

As the release date gets closer, more critical reviews are coming in - and it's definitely worth a watch if those are anything to go by.

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Currently, Together has an impressive 100 per cent on the Tomatometer for critic reviews on the popular film review aggregate website.

"Director Shanks is in his devilishly playful element, while Brie and Franco throw themselves full force into a scenario that keeps getting weirder," said The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney.

Screen Rant's Brittany Patrice Witherspoon commented, "If you’re looking for the latest body horror film to become obsessed over, look no further than Michael Shanks’ directorial debut, Together."

"A giddy grotesquerie that has midnight-movie crowd-pleaser written all over it," The Daily Beast's Nick Schager wrote.

Lawsuit controversy

It was previously reported back in May that Shanksis, Franco and Brie are being sued for copyright infringement over the film. The lawsuit filed in California by StudioFest producers Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale, who claim Together is a “blatant rip-off” of their 2023 romantic comedy Better Half.

“This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit. The facts in this case are clear and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves," a spokesperson for WME said in a statement to The Independent at the time.

According to the lawsuit, Franco and Brie’s agents at WME Entertainment were approached in 2020 by a casting director working on behalf of StudioFest with the Better Half script in 2020 with the hopes of casting the couple in the film, but they declined this offer.

The producers claim Franco and Brie's film is “virtually identical" to theirs and pointed to similarities.

"Both works center around a couple who wake up to find their bodies physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency,” says the suit. “The similarities do not end there. Defendants lifted wholesale creative elements, including but not limited to, plot, themes, characters, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, and sequence of events.”

“In both works, Plato’s Symposium serves as a thematic vehicle to explore the idea that humans were once whole but were split apart, leaving them searching for their missing half.

“Indeed, Together copies Better Half’s explicit reference to Plato’s Symposium in a virtually verbatim way, with both works explaining that humans were originally created with two faces and eight limbs and were split in half by Zeus because the gods feared man’s power.”

It continued, “Both works end in the same way, with the couple pulling out a vinyl record of the Spice Girls album—Spiceworld—in the scene where they accept their fate.” It states that both films reference the “same exact Spice Girls song ‘2 Become 1.’”

In the latest update, the team behind Together has hit back at the lawsuit with attorney Nicolas Jampol writing in a May 21 letter (obtained by Variety,) to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, "Your client does not own this concept."

“Neither do our clients. It is an unprotectable idea, one that predates all of our clients and has been explored in many films, television shows and other fictional works.”

He described Better Half as light and comedic, while Together as a supernatural “body horror” thriller and pointed out that Shanks had completed the draft for "Together" and registered it with the WGA in 2019. This was a year before Brie and Franco’s agent at WME received the offer for Better Half.

“Before your client ever submitted a script to WME, Mr. Shanks already had written most of the elements your client now accuses him of stealing,” Jampol wrote. “The simple truth is that none of our clients copied a thing from Better Half.”

The director of the film, Michael Shanks, said in a statement in June [via The Wrap]: “I lost my father at a young age in the same way our main character does, his trauma is rooted in my own. To have this called into question is not only deeply upsetting but entirely untrue.”

Indy100 has reached out to Franco and Brie's representatives for comment.

Elsewhere, The internet wants Ryan Murphy to make Luigi Mangione series, and Alison Brie streaks nude through hotel to give husband a "shock".

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