The Truth About Emanuel director takes Shyamalan’s Servant to court

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Released in 2013, writer/director Francesca Gregorini's psychological thriller THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL starred Jessica Biel and Kaya Scodelario and told the following story:

A troubled girl (Emanuel) becomes preoccupied with her mysterious new neighbor (Linda), who bears a striking resemblance to her dead mother. In offering to baby-sit Linda's newborn, Emanuel unwittingly enters a fragile, fictional world, of which she becomes the gatekeeper.

The twist is that Linda's newborn is actually a doll, but Emanuel goes along with the act that it's a real baby.

A couple months ago, Apple+ premiered the first season of Servant, a psychological thriller series created by Tony Basgallop and executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Lauren Ambrose, Toby Kebbell, Nell Tiger Free, and Rupert Grint, Servant is about 

a couple that has formed an emotional bond with a doll created to resemble their dead infant daughter and the nanny the couple hired to take care of it.

The concept's similarity to THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL is why Gregorini has now hit Apple, Shyamalan, Basgallop, and the rest of the show's executive producers and production companies with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Gregorini accuses the defendants of stealing the premise from her film and "rewriting it through a male gaze".

The Wrap reports that 

the lawsuit describes the list of similarities between THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL and Servant as one that ranges “from shared grand themes and character arcs, to identical granular details.” But the lawsuit also highlights differences, including how the events of the plot are “sometimes seen through the eyes of two men — who watch and comment on the women’s ‘insanity’ while pounding tequila shots and pondering whether the nanny is ‘f—able.'”

“Gender injustice in Hollywood is not a formal part of Ms. Gregorini’s claim, which stands on its own under the basic principles of copyright law. But it is certainly part of the broader picture of Defendants’ misappropriation of EMANUEL,” argues the lawsuit. “While Hollywood’s patriarchal system sometimes manifests in explicit and raw ways, it can also operate more subtly, as it has here. But the injury to women deserving of equality is no less grievous.”

I have seen THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL, but honestly don't remember much about it, and I haven't seen Servant at all, so I'm definitely not one who can decide whether or not the two projects are too similar. We'll see what the court thinks of Gregorini's claim.