Alison Brie, Dave Franco hit with copyright lawsuit over film ‘Together’

Alison Brie and her husband, Dave Franco, show up together in a lot of things — including a recently filed copyright infringement lawsuit over their upcoming horror film, Together.

The movie, the first feature from director Michael Shanks, stars Brie and Franco as Millie and Tim, a fictional married couple who are drifting apart. But as the story progresses, they become closer than ever in a literal, physical sense. The film, in theaters July 30, sold for a reported $17 million after a bidding war at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

However, in a suit filed on Tuesday, producers Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale allege that Together is a “blatant rip-off” of their 2023 independent film, Better Half, stealing several plot and thematic elements, including the central concept of a couple who “wake up to find their bodies physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency.”

Although Better Half was written and directed by Patrick Henry Phelan, Jacklin and Beale’s production company, StudioFest, is the only plaintiff named in the suit.

“My client’s original work was stolen,” Jacklin and Beale’s lawyer Dan Miller said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday. “The similarities between the two works are staggering and defy any innocent explanation. We intend to hold the defendants accountable, and look forward to trial.”

Better Half ‘s synopsis describes the film as “a surreal, satirical comedy about a man and a woman who have a one-night stand and wake up to see that they have become literally and physically attached — an attachment that seems to be progressing toward total connection/immersion unless they figure out how to reverse it.”

The suit claims that Brie and Franco were pitched Better Half in 2020 but that they and their agents at William Morris Endeavor turned it down. In emails reviewed by EW, the casting director sent a script and synopsis to Franco and Brie’s agents at WME in August 2020.

After clarifying whether the note was an offer for the couple to star in the movie together, Franco’s agent responded, “Dave is going to pass, but thank you for thinking of him.”

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants rejected the initial offer “because they wanted to produce the film themselves and have WME package the project with one of the agency’s own writers.” It highlights several alleged similarities between the two films.

“In both Better Half and Together, the main characters struggle to navigate daily life as their physical attachment progresses and they start to control each other’s body parts,” the suit states. “While at first they desperately search for ways to detach their bodies — from medical intervention to chainsaws — by the end, they resign themselves to their conjoined existence.”

“This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit,” a WME spokesperson told EW in response to the allegations. “The facts in this case are clear, and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves.”

Brie and Franco, who have teamed up for various projects in the past, recently explained to EW why they would not have wanted to work on Together with anyone else.

“Well, first of all, physically, the movie was very demanding,” Brie said. “There were days that Dave and I were physically attached for several hours, going to the bathroom together. And things like that may have been awkward with people you’re not married to.”

But with his wife, Franco said, “Being literally attached to each other for half the day… was fun.”

“Even when we weren’t attached, the movie is very intense, and we were moving at a really quick speed to shoot the film,” Brie said. “I think the shorthand that Dave and I have together, not just because we’re married, but because we’ve worked together so much, was really helpful in terms of keeping everything moving really quickly and us being on the same page and us being locked into these characters in their relationship.”

“I have a collage of all my injuries from this film,” Franco added proudly. “We documented everything, but I think the worst was the rope burn on my hands where I walked away from that day with bandages over both hands. You don’t realize how much you use your hands until you can’t use your hands. But I definitely got beat up more on this film than anything I’ve ever done before.”

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Director Shanks said he thinks that he and the actors have accomplished something wholly unique with Together. “One of the things I most look for when I watch a film is to see something I’ve never seen before, and there are sequences in this where I truly believe we’ve pulled that off,” he told EW. “There was one sequence where, after each take, I was just hooting and hollering. I literally couldn’t believe anyone let me shoot something so over-the-top and revolting.”

He said he told Brie and Franco that he wanted their characters to go “through hell” in the film. “And when you watch it,” he added, “you’ll understand why.”