The lawsuit over Guillermo Del Toro’s Oscar-winning movie The Shape of Water has been settled. The suit from alleged that Del Toro and his collaborators had plagiarized the story of The Shape of Water from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Paul Zindel’s 1969 play Let Me Hear You Whisper, which told the story of a cleaning lady in a laboratory, who forms an attachment to a dolphin being used in a science experiment. That obviously sounds a lot like the story Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (Divergent) wrote for The Shape of Water, but now it’s being stated that any claims of plagiarism are completely “unfounded.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Searchlight Pictures (which was a co-defendant in the suit) released a statement about the matter, letting it be known unequivocally that: “David Zindel, the son of Paul Zindel, author of Let Me Hear You Whisper, acknowledges, based on confidential information obtained during the litigation process, that his claims of plagiarism are unfounded. He acknowledges Guillermo del Toro as the true creator of The Shape of Water. Any similarity between the two works is coincidental.”
No report on what exactly happened behind closed doors to lead to this outcome, but it must have been significant. The suit was first filed in early 2018 by Paul Zindel’s estate (and obviously his son, Paul), just as The Shape of Water was been heavily weighed by Oscar voters. The film would ultimately get 13 nominations and four wins, including Best Picture and Best Director – but that didn’t mean it cleared all the legal hurdles. According to the original suit, Shape of Water “brazenly copies the story, elements, characters, and themes” of Let Me Hear Your Whisper.
Guillermo Del Toro denied any theft, stating, “I have never read nor seen the play. I’d never heard of this play before making The Shape of Water, and none of my collaborators ever mentioned the play.”
A few months after the lawsuit was filed, Judge Percy Anderson dismissed the suit. In June of 2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the case again, after expressing that the initial ruling may have been too rash:
“Though both works properly were presented to the district court, additional evidence, including expert testimony, would aid in the objective literary analysis needed to determine the extent and qualitative importance of the similarities that Zindel identified in the works’ expressive elements, particularly the plausibly alleged shared plot sequence.”
A much bigger case involving expert analysis and debate over creative influence vs. theft was set to unfold in court in July – but now the issue has been resolved. This is just one of several plagiarism accusations that The Shape of Water has had to face; the other big one that that Del Toro’s film lifted ideas from the 1962 Soviet film Amphibian Man.
The Shape of Water is now streaming on HBO Max.
Reporting by THR
