Screenwriter sues Alexander Payne, saying The Holdovers was built on his unmade script

Screenwriter Simon Stephenson has sued the director Alexander Payne, claiming that The Holdovers was based on his script Frisco, which was never made into a film. Variety reported the suit on 28 October 2026.

The lawsuit also names the screenwriter David Hemingson, who wrote The Holdovers, the producer Mark Johnson, and the companies Miramax and Focus Features as defendants. The film is set and was shot in Massachusetts. Stephenson's side contends that the plots of the two works share 46 matched incidents.

Frisco follows a dispirited doctor stuck looking after a precocious teenage patient. Stephenson wrote it in 2012 and 2013, drawing on his years as a paediatrician. The script ranked third on the Black List, a closely watched list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.

The suit says Payne read Frisco in 2013 and again in 2019, and passed on producing or directing it. It alleges that elements of the script reached drafts of The Holdovers through Payne's input to Hemingson.

This is not the first time the claim has surfaced. In 2024, Stephenson took his allegations to the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents screenwriters. The guild told him it could not rule on the Holdovers issue and referred him to a lawyer. Variety had first reported the accusation in March 2024, when Stephenson was named as the writer of Luca, one of his screen credits alongside Paddington 2 and The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.

Stephenson has said the alleged copying is not line-by-line. He argues that the film took broader structures from his work. WBUR carried his comments in 2024.

Payne has denied the plagiarism allegations, speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival. For now, these are claims in a lawsuit, not findings by a court. The names of the defendants show how wide the case reaches, from the director and writer to the studios that backed the film.