In a few short hours, critically acclaimed film, The Holdovers is up for a number of Oscar Awards, one of them being for best screenplay. However, on January 12, screenwriter Simon Stephenson wrote an email to the Writer’s Guild of America with the subject line, “An urgent plea for help from a WGA writer in a truly extraordinary situation.” The situation in question? Stephenson claimed that the script for The Holdovers was allegedly plagiarized.

In am email to the WGA board, 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. By ‘meaningful entirety’ I do mean literally everything- 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 script Stephenson refers to in the email is his screenplay Frisco, which follows the story of an aging children’s doctor, who is tasked with looking after a 15 year old patient. Frisco was at the No. 3 spot on The Black List, the annual survey of unproduced scripts looking to get made into a movie back in 2013.

In the emails to the WGA, Stephenson claims that The Holdovers director Alexander Payne was allegedly given the script to Frisco in 2013 and again in 2019. On August 28, 2013, an email was allegedly sent by Hollywood agency Verve founder Bryan Besser to people in the industry saying, “Quick update: We gave FRISCO to Alexander Payne’s producing partner Jim Burke whom we took to lunch yesterday. Our opinion is that in an ideal world this is the best way into Searchlight.”

In November, UTA’s Geoff Morley allegedly sent an email saying, “I spoke to Alexander Payne’s exec Jim Burke directly a while back and he said that Payne did like it but was not interested in prod or directing it.”

Again in 2019, Top executive Lisa Nishimura, who then worked for Netflix brought the script to Payne. John Woodward, who allegedly brought the script to Netflix with producer Tanya Seghatchian, allegedly wrote in an email to Stephenson and Seghatchian,”Sorry to say that Alexander has now read but says it is not quite what he is looking for. Might be worth following up with [Bob Odenkirk]. Netflix’s interest was predicated on Alexander but Odenkirk might be of interest to them too- do you want use to sound them out? Or there is still Krasinski possible. Keen to know your thoughts….”

Although the screenplay for The Holdovers was written by David Hemingson, Payne has acknowledged that he was part of creating the story. During a press conference at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Payne said, “I got involved in the script, although I don’t take credit or it.”

Payne talked about the inspiration and creation for the movie during an interview on the podcast “The Rough Cut.” The director said, “I had the idea for the movie — that I stole from a 1935 French movie I’d seen at a film festival about a dozen years ago — and I thought ‘That’s a good premise for a movie.’ Not the story, how it pans out, but the premise. And so I was sitting on this premise for years thinking ‘Oh, I’ve got to go, you know, out to Eastern prep school some day and research that idea because I’m not from that world. And then about five years ago, I received, completely randomly, a TV pilot set at a boarding school. So that’s when I called up [Hemingson] and I said, ‘Hey, you’ve written a great pilot. I don’t want to do it. But would you consider writing a story for me, set in that same world?’ — that’s how it happened.”

Payne went on to say, “[…] David was sharing, you know, portions of drafts with me during his process. I had the idea, we hashed out the idea tog- I mean the story idea together. He would send me different versions of what the story could be and then I could say yes or put the kibosh on it or whatever, and then we kind of hashed it out together.”

Hemingson and Payne declined to comment when Variety reached out. Stephenson confirmed the authenticity of the email to Variety, but declined to comment as well.

Stephenson is said to be urging the WGA to conduct an investigation, but the case has sparked debates within the organization. WGA West associate counsel Leila Azari wrote, “Claims related to plagiarism and/or copyright infringement are not arbitrable under the MBA. You and I also discussed Article X of the Guild Constitution. Plagiarism and copyright infringement actions necessarily require extensive fact finding and discovery, which would not be available to you in an Article X proceeding.  Further, an Article X proceeding could not provide the relief that you are seeking; namely, recognition of your authorship of the screenplay and/or monetary compensation from [‘The Holdovers’ financier] Miramax. A lawsuit remains the most viable option under the circumstances.”