Plagiarism charges dropped from director Guillermo del Toro for “The Shape of Water”
Litigation between Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and the son of writer Paul Zindel has come to an end. The copyright dispute, which lasted three years, ended in an agreement between the parties, writes The Hollywood Reporter .
The subject of the dispute was the claims of the son of the writer Paul Zindel, author of the book Let Me Hear Your Whisper, published in 1969. He argued that the film “The Shape of Water” borrows a lot from the plot of his father's literary work.
In the movie, as in the book, the heroine of the plot is a cleaning lady working in a secret laboratory. Both of them, guided by a feeling of love, save the sea creature they are experimenting on by evacuating it in a laundry basket.
The first lawsuit, filed in 2018, was dismissed by the court. And in 2020, the case was returned to consideration after an appeal. The trial was supposed to take place in July 2021, but the plaintiff withdrew his charges, reaching an agreement with the defendants.
Recall that in 2018, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water won an Oscar in the Best Film nomination. In the same year, a litigation began between the filmmakers and the playwright's son.
