Dave Franco and wife Alison Brie sued following new £13 million movie

Dave Franco and Alison Brie are being sued over their new movie, Together.

The pair both starred in and produced the independent body horror film which was shown at Sundance ahead of a release date set for 30 July in the US.

The flick reportedly sparked a bidding war at the film festival in New York back in January, with distributor Neon buying the rights for a reported $17 million (£12.7 million).

But now, Brie and Franco have been named as defendants alongside writer and director Michael Shanks in the lawsuit alleging copyright infringement. Filed on Tuesday (13 May), it alleges that the horror is a ‘blatant rip-off’ of 2023 independent film, Better Half. Let's unpack the claims.

Together follows a married couple (played by real-life married couple Brie and Franco) who wake up after an argument to discover their bodies have bizarrely been fused together.

The body horror is slated for release in July (Neon)

This mysterious force means they must ‘confront the toxic co-dependency that binds them’.

However, the lawsuit alleges that the plot is extremely similar to that of Better Half.

In his suit, the writer and director, Patrick Henry Phelan, alleges that his script was pitched to the Hollywood couple back in August 2020 but they and their WME agents turned it down.

It is alleged that Brie and Franco rejected it as ‘they wanted to produce the film themselves and have WME package the project with one of the agency’s own writers’.

And when the producers of Better Half, Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale, heard about Brie and Franco’s new film the day before the Sundance screening, they decided to view it to look at the similarities.

“As the audience laughed and cheered, Jacklin and Beale sat in stunned silence, their worst nightmare unfolding,” the suit states. “Scene after scene confirmed that Defendants did not simply take ‘stock ideas’ or ‘scenes a faire’ but stole virtually every unique aspect of Better Half’s copyrightable expression.”

Their film was shown at Sundance in January (Clayton Chase/IndieWire via Getty Images)

It adds that the ‘similarities do not end’ at the couple’s bodies being fused together ‘as a metaphor for co-dependency’.

“Defendants lifted wholesale creative elements, including but not limited to, plot, themes, characters, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, and sequence of events,” the suit states, before developing each point with examples and comparing stills from both films throughout the document.

It also claims: “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.”

The suit also referred to a specific scene that they claim is very similar to the indie flick, stating: "Both works feature a strikingly similar bathroom sequence where the protagonists become attached at the genitals and attempt to hide their intimate encounter from a minor character waiting just outside.(...)

"This is not a generic comedic trope—it is a highly specific, artistic choice that plays out in a nearly identical fashion with both works framing the scene using a visual shot of the minor character’s feet peeking out from just outside the door."

In response, a WME spokesperson has called the suit ‘frivolous and without merit’.

LADbible Group has contacted Brie and Franco's representatives, WME, Neon, and Shanks for comment.