Director M Night Shyamalan went on trial on Tuesday (14 January) over allegations that he plagiarised from an independent film for his Apple TV + series Servant.
The $81m (£66m) lawsuit brought by Italian director Francesca Gregorini accuses Shyamalan of taking key elements from her 2013 film The Truth about Emanuel.
His psychological horror series, Servant, follows the story of a couple who hire an eighteen-year-old girl to help them look after a child. It transpires that the child is dead, and has been replaced by a reborn doll, which the traumatised mother still believes is alive.
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Gregorini alleges that the film shares substantial similarities to hers. She originally sued in January 2000, shortly after the series was released. The case was thrown out by a federal judge in the first instance, but was revived in 2022 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who found a genuine dispute over whether the works were in fact “substantially similar”.
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The jury in the case will be required to watch both The Truth about Emanuel and the first three episodes of Servant, back-to-back before the attorneys of both respective parties make their case.
I feel MNS may be kicking himself he didn’t think of this.
His plan was to rip off shit films written and directed by serial killers, so they’d sue him for millions and they could be arrested when they came to have their day in court. He’d then make a film about it called Crap.