“The Shape of Water,” a contender for this year’s best picture Oscar, was hit with a plagiarism lawsuit, alleging that its fantastical plot about a romance between a cleaning woman and a mysterious river creature was lifted directly from an American stage play.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, alleged that director Guillermo del Toro, producer Daniel Kraus and movie studio Fox Searchlight “brazenly copies the story, elements, characters and themes” from a 1969 play by the late Paul Zindel.
“The Shape of Water” has a leading 13 Oscar nominations at the March 4 Academy Awards ceremony, including nods for best picture and best director.
Reuters reported that the lawsuit, filed by Zindel’s son David, listed more than 60 resemblances between the play “Let Me Hear You Whisper,” and “The Shape of Water.”
They include the play and the movie’s basic story of the lonely janitor who works at a scientific laboratory during the Cold War, forms a loving bond with a captive aquatic creature and hatches a plan to liberate it.
In the Zindel play, the creature is a dolphin. In the movie, it is a half-man, half-river creature.
The lawsuit said that despite “the glaring similarities between the play and the obviously derivative picture, defendants never bothered to seek or obtain a customary license” for the rights to Zindel’s play, nor credit him.
