A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Dave Franco and Alison Brie of stealing the idea for their new body-horror film Together, which NEON purchased out of the latest Sundance Film Festival for a reported $17 million.
Production company StudioFest, created by Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale, says in the lawsuit that Together is “blatant rip-off of Better Half,” a low-budget indie written and directed by Patrick Henry Phelan that they made and first released to festivals in 2023.
The suit names Brie, Franco, their agency, WME, NEON, and Together director Michael Shanks.
“This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit,” WME said in a statement. “The facts in this case are clear and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves.”
Full disclosure: MovieMaker, which is not involved in the suit, collaborated with StudioFest on the Demystified video series and attended an in-person reading of an early draft of the Better Half script in 2019. So take anything we write with a grain of salt and feel free to check out the Variety or Hollywood Reporter stories about the suit.
StudioFest’s Better Half vs. Together Starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie
The StudioFest lawsuit contends that Franco and Brie were offered the lead roles in their film — about a couple who become physically connected after a one-night stand — but passed in August 2020.
StudioFest went ahead and made the film with actors Dianne Doan and Connor Paolo as the leads, and wrapped filming on Better Half in October 2021.
Better Half premiered at Dances With Films in 2023, then continued to screen publicly at festivals including the Brooklyn Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival, Beloit International Film Festival and Julien Dubuque International Film Festival.
Together premiered at Sundance in January of this year.
The suit alleges striking similarities between the two films, including scenes in which the characters discuss Plato’s Symposium in a “near-verbatim way, explaining that human beings originally had two faces and eight limbs, but Zeus split them in half because the gods feared man’s power.”
The suit says both films also include a final “pivotal emotional scene” in which the main characters put on a vinyl LP of the Spice Girls album Spiceworld.
And both films feature a couple composed of a codependent partner and a commitment-phobic artist, both of whom are in their 30s.
The lawsuit also accuses the defendants of fabricating a story about the origins of Together to cover up the alleged theft of Phelan’s idea.
“My client’s original work was stolen. The similarities between the two works are staggering and defy any innocent explanation. We intend to hold the defendants accountable and look forward to trial,” said attorney Dan Miller of Miller Barondess, the law firm representing StudioFest.
The lawsuit also includes a copy of a letter to Brie and Franco’s representatives at WME, in which they are offered $20,000 each to appear in what the Better Half team describes as “a surreal, satirical comedy about a man and woman who have a one-night stand, and wake up to find that they have become literally and physically attached.”
The offer letter notes that the film “will really hit, depending on the chemistry of the two leads.”
The offer also notes that Phelan is a writer-director with a Master’s from USC who has worked as an assistant director and has placed in several screenwriting contests, including BlueCat and Launch, and that he was an Academy Nichol Fellowship semi-finalist.
Jacklin and Beale founded StudioFest with the intention of financing, shooting and distributing filmmakers’ first features. StudioFest’s first film, Souvenirs, was released in 2020. Jacklin also directed the HBO documentary Quad Gods, released last year.
Brie and Franco, who have been married since 2017, have previously collaborated on films including The Rental and The Disaster Artist. Brie is best known for her starring roles in Community, GLOW and Mad Men, and Franco is best known for his work in Neighbors and the Now You See Me franchise. He is the brother of James Franco.
NEON plans to release Together in theaters on August 1.
Main image: Alison Brie and Dave Franco in Together. NEON.