M.Night Shyamalan accused of plagiarism for his Servant series

Director Francesca Gregorini is seeking $81 million for copying elements of her film.

The trial against the series by director M. Night Shyamalan, available on Apple TV+, began on Tuesday. The cause: the creators allegedly used key elements from The Truth About Emmanuel, an independent film by Francesca Gregorini, starring Kaya Scodelario and Jessica Biel, released in 2013. The Italian-American director features a young woman who agrees to keep the lifelike doll of her neighbor, a mother who recently lost her daughter.

Those who have seen Servant will immediately notice similarities. Dorothy Turner (Lauren Ambrose) has also lost her child and uses a doll resembling a real baby for therapeutic purposes. A nanny (Nell Tiger Free) is also hired to care for the baby, thus making herself complicit in the mother’s madness. Gregorini’s lawyer, Patrick Arenz, told jurors, “There would be no Servant without Emanuel, ” Variety reports. The plaintiff is seeking $81 million.

On the defense side, there is Mr. Night Shyamalan, accompanied by producer Taylor Latham, screenwriter Tony Basgallop, and Apple TV+ programming executive Matt Cherniss. Attorney Brittany Armadi said that Tony Basgallop began writing the series a year before The Truth About Emmanuel came out. “The truth is that the creators of Servant owe Ms. Gregorini nothing,” she says. For his part, Arenz claims that the story between the mother and the doll was added to the script a year after the film came out.

The type of toy used in both works is reborn dolls. These models have been around since the early 2000s, and the defense uses this argument to contradict the accusations made against the series. “You can’t own a fact or an idea,” Armadi says. The whole difficulty will be to know whether or not there has been a copyright infringement.