The producers and distributor behind Together have been sued for allegedly stealing the idea for the upcoming body horror romance and surprise Sundance Film Festival hit.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, StudioFest claims Dave Franco and Alison Brie turned down an offer for them to star in Better Half, a 2023 movie it financed and owns the rights to, with the aim of crafting a copycat film alongside another WME client. Both works explore a supernatural encounter that leads to a couple seeing their bodies fused together.

Named in the complaint: WME, which allegedly facilitated the copyright infringement; Franco and Brie, both of whom are credited as producers and star in the film; Michael Shanks, who wrote and directed Together; and Neon, which bought the title for $17 million in one of the richest deals in Sundance history and is planning an August theatrical release.

In 2019, Patrick Phelan wrote the Better Half screenplay, which was optioned by StudioFest, according to the complaint. The casting director for the film later emailed the WME agents who represent Franco and Brie to extend a $20,000 offer for the lead roles. The full script for the movie was attached in the message, the lawsuit says.

After the offer was turned down, StudioFest proceeded with production. The move premiered in 2023 to little buzz. Better Half producers, in the lawsuit, say they “sat in stunned silence, their worst nightmare unfolding” when they watched Together at Sundance earlier this year.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Franco said he signed on to produce and star in Together immediately after WME arranged a meeting between him and Shanks. Brie, who said she had been “lurking in the shadows” of the discussion, joined after Franco, her husband, forwarded her the script. “I got a call from my agent saying, ‘Hey, Dave wants to do the film.’” Shanks recalled. “I’m, like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Then he said, ‘His wife Alison has read it and she likes it, too. How would you feel about both of them coming on board?’”

Franco added, “I remember reading the [Together] script and immediately turning to Alison to say, ‘I think we should act in this one together,’ because the characters had been together for over a decade. I figured that our real-life relationship could lend itself well to that dynamic.”

The lawsuit stresses that the movies center around a couple whose bodies become physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency. They have identical endings, with the couple pulling out a vinyl record of the same Spice Girls album in a key dancing scene in which they accept their fates, the complaint alleges.

“In both works, the main characters’ careers are also substantially similar,” writes Dan Miller, a lawyer for StudioFest, in the complaint. “In both, Character A is a teacher and Character B is a punk artist looking for their big break.”

Other examples: Together and Better Half share a visual motif of two rodents stuck together as a foreshadowing device and a bathroom sequence in which the protagonists become attached at their genitals and attempt to hide it from a character waiting 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,” the complaint states. “Defendants used the same combination of the awkward physical attachment, the urgency to remain hidden, and the romantic subtext of the looming outsider to achieve a substantially similar feel.”

Miller says that the “similarities between the two works are staggering and defy any innocent explanation.”

Together is Shanks’ feature directorial debut after turning heads with a well-received short film, Rebooted, and a Blacklist screenplay, Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel.

U.S. Copyright law doesn’t protect general ideas — like the trope of a ragtag group of misfits, each with their own unique skill, banding together to pull off a high-stakes con — but rather the expression of those ideas. In dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Showtime Networks and Lionsgate’s Entertainment One over Yellowjacket, for instance, the court found some similarities are common tropes found in several survival thrillers, including the death of a head coach and survival of his two children, attempts by survivors to escape isolation and the division of groups into rival factions. Still, courts have found in other cases that alleged similarities between two works are specific enough to be considered by a jury.