Actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie are facing a lawsuit filed against them for copyright infringement over their new horror movie coming out in July 2025, Together.
The movie is about a couple fused together
The horror movie is set to star the real-life married couple Franco, 39, and Brie, 42, and is about a couple who wake up to find themselves fused together as a symbol of their codependency.
The supernatural body horror is set to come out in theatres in July.
StudioFest producers have filed a lawsuit
Despite the movie being set to come out in a couple of months, StudioFest producers Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale filed a lawsuit in California on May 14 against the couple.
In the lawsuit, they claim that Franco and Brie’s movie is a “blatant rip-off” of their 2023 romcom Better Half.
The couple have since responded
WME Entertainment, where Franco and Brie’s agents operate, has responded to news of the lawsuit.
In a statement, a spokesperson for WME said, “This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit. The facts in this case are clear and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves,” as per The Independent.
The producers are saying Franco and Brie stole the idea
The lawsuit states that Franco and Brie’s agents at WME were approached by a casting director working on behalf of StudioFest in 2020.
They were allegedly approached with the script for Better Half, asking if Franco and Brie would be willing to play the couple in the movie, to which they declined.
The producers claim it’s “virtually identical”
When learning about Together earlier this year, the producers claimed that the movie was “virtually identical” to the one they approached the couple with in 2020.
The lawsuit alleges serious copyright infringement
“Both works center around a couple who wake up to find their bodies physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency,” the lawsuit reads.
“The similarities do not end there. Defendants lifted wholesale creative elements, including but not limited to, plot, themes, characters, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, and sequence of events.”
The suit cites multiple similarities
Multiple similarities between the two movies are cited in the lawsuit, with it further claiming, “In both works, Plato’s Symposium serves as a thematic vehicle to explore the idea that humans were once whole but were split apart, leaving them searching for their missing half.”
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It claims the themes are oddly similar
“Indeed, Together copies Better Half’s explicit reference to Plato’s Symposium in a virtually verbatim way, with both works explaining that humans were originally created with two faces and eight limbs and were split in half by Zeus because the gods feared man’s power,” the suit adds.
The lawsuit also claims both movies have the same ending
The suit also alleges, “Both works end in the same way, with the couple pulling out a vinyl record of the Spice Girls album—Spiceworld—in the scene where they accept their fate.” It states that both films reference the “same exact Spice Girls song ‘2 Become 1.’”
The movie comes out in July
Together comes out in July 2025, having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and sold to film distributors Neon for a reported $17 million.
