Screenwriter Sues Alexander Payne, Alleging 'The Holdovers' Was Built on His Unproduced Script

Screenwriter Simon Stephenson filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against director Alexander Payne, claiming that the script for "The Holdovers" was drawn from an unproduced screenplay he wrote about a children's hospital.

Besides Payne, the suit names "Holdovers" screenwriter David Hemingson, producer Mark Johnson, Miramax, Focus Features and other corporate entities as defendants.

According to the complaint, the two scripts share 46 "matched incidents." Stephenson's screenplay, titled "Frisco," follows a dispirited doctor at the hospital who is left to care for a precocious teenage patient. The pair become friends during a trip to San Francisco, and the story ends with the doctor deciding to quit his job and head off on a cross-country journey.

The filing argues that the resemblance to "The Holdovers" goes beyond coincidence. It says the structure and events of "Frisco" "were meticulously transposed into 'The Holdovers,' with surface cosmetic details changed." It adds: "Screenplays are often called the blueprint for a film. The Defendants built their film using 'Frisco' as their blueprint."

Stephenson is an established screenwriter whose credits include "Paddington 2," "Luca" and "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain." He wrote "Frisco" in 2012 and 2013, drawing on his own experiences as a pediatrician. The script later placed third on the Black List, the annual ranking of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.

Stephenson says his agents tried to get Payne interested in making the film and persuaded him to read the script in 2013 and again in 2019. According to the lawsuit, Payne passed. His producing partner told Stephenson's agent that "Payne did like it but was not interested in prod or directing it."

The suit alleges that elements of "Frisco" found their way into drafts of "The Holdovers" through Payne's input to Hemingson.

Stephenson first raised his concerns in 2024 with the Writers Guild of America. The union told him it could not adjudicate the matter and referred him to a lawyer. Payne subsequently rejected the allegations at the Sarajevo Film Festival, describing the claim as "the stupidest thing in the world."