The award for ‘Best Ripoff’ goes to: five Oscar-winning movies that were sued for plagiarism
One common belief about storytelling is that there are only seven basic plots from which all tales in any form of media are derived. If anything, that makes it surprising that more movies haven’t been sued for plagiarism, whether they’ve won an Oscar or not.
Whether it’s a film, TV show, novel, comic book, video game, or anything else, the idea that every single story ever told is archetypal is a fascinating one. Whether it’s ‘Overcoming the Monster’, ‘Rags to Riches’, ‘The Quest’, ‘Voyage and Return’, ‘Comedy’, ‘Tragedy’, or ‘Rebirth’, it’s always fun to pick something out of a hat and see which one applies.
Of course, when the likes of Homer, William Shakespeare, and Leo Tolstoy were around, they didn’t need to concern themselves with watching the Academy Awards and being struck by the notion that a winning film bears a suspicious similarity to one of their own stories. Hollywood is a place where lawsuits are rife and can be filed on a whim, and the biggest night on the calendar makes the perfect backdrop.
What the following five features have in common, besides the fact that they were all sued for plagiarism, is that they all won. It’s one thing to accuse a writer or director of being a ripoff merchant, but clearly, it’s a whole different ballgame trying to prove it.
Five Oscar-winning movies accused of being rip-offs:
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)
The Hurt Locker made Oscars history when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win ‘Best Director’, with the immersive war drama scooping another five prizes, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’.
The levels of authenticity and realism came from writer Mark Boal embedding himself with military bomb disposal experts in Iraq, which hit too close to home for one soldier. Jeffrey Sarver filed a lawsuit claiming that Jeremy Renner’s William James and his backstory had been lifted from his life without credit and that he was the one who told Boal the phrase “hurt locker” and the film’s signature mantra of “war is a drug”.
The legal claim was made days before The Hurt Locker claimed a sextet of Oscars and was dismissed by a judge who ruled the movie was “unquestionably derived from the creativity and skill of the writers, directors and producers who conceived, wrote, directed, edited and produced it,” and not Sarver.
The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)
Alexander Payne’s instant alternative Christmas classic was shortlisted for five Oscars and was in the thick of the ‘Best Picture’ race, but Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s ‘Best Supporting Actress’ victory was the only gold it took home.
Undoubtedly one of the more bizarre plagiarism accusations to be levelled at an Academy Award-winning film, The Holdovers was sued by Simon Stephenson for being, as he claimed, “forensically identical” to a script he’d written a decade previously called Frisco. Naturally, Payne denied it and went one step further by naming the film he’d actually ripped off.
“I’ve spoken openly about the film I did steal the idea for The Holdovers from, and it was a 1935 French film,” he said, referring to Marcel Pagnol’s Merlusse. “That’s where I stole it from. I didn’t steal it from that guy.” Needless to say, the lawsuit didn’t get very far.
The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999)
As one of the most influential, game-changing, and industry-shaking movies of its era, it was almost inevitable that somebody would come out of the woodwork and claim the idea behind The Matrix belonged to them and not the Wachowski siblings.
Sure enough, the sci-fi blockbuster was sued more than once. The curious case of Sophia Stewart snowballed into an online urban legend, but The Matrix was also accused of plagiarism by The Immortals scribe Thomas Althouse, and both of them were summarily tossed out of court.
While it’s true that the Wachowskis drew their inspirations from across the worlds of film, television, animation, literature, psychology, and spiritualism to concoct their four-time Oscar-winning epic, they didn’t lift the concept wholesale from somebody else.
Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)
No stranger to being sued for allegedly stealing ideas from other people, James Cameron has been in the constant crosshairs of disgruntled creatives for decades. When he directed the highest-grossing movie of all time again, the floodgates reopened.
Cameron has been dealing with plagiarism accusations since his Terminator days, and some claims have held more water than others. That said, he emerged unscathed after a bombardment of lawsuits were filed when Avatar cut a swathe through the box office.
Nominated for nine Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, and winning three for its technical merits, Avatar didn’t give Cameron a chance to recreate his Titanic moment, which is just as well when he was too busy being sued by Gerald Morawski, Eric Ryder, Bryant Moore, and William Roger Dean, all of whom individually claimed he’d ripped them off.
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)
A woman falling in love with a fish man doesn’t immediately jump out as a story that two people would independently concoct at the same time, which is pretty much the point the estate of Paul Zindel was making when it sued Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Best Picture‘ winner.
The Zindel lawsuit alleged similarities to his teleplay Let Me Hear You Whisper, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet also came forward to suggest del Toro had been blatantly picking elements from Amelie, Delicatessen, and The City of Lost Children, although he did stop short of trying his chances in court.
When a judge decreed that del Toro and the studio were the originators of everything about The Shape of Water, Zindel’s son was forced to back down and release a statement confirming “his claims of plagiarism are unfounded” and acknowledging the director as the “true creator.”
