Shape of Water film maker denies copying 1969 play

Writer’s son sues Oscarnominated filmmaker over ‘61 similarities’ between film and father’s work

GUILLERMO DEL TORO, the Oscarnominated director of The Shape of Water, has hit back at accusations that his film “brazenly copies” the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Del Toro and Fox Searchlight, the studio behind the film, were sued this week by the son of author Paul Zindel.

David Zindel claims the film, nominated for 13 Oscars including Best Original Screenplay, “brazenly copies the story, elements, characters and themes” of his late father’s 1969 play Let Me Hear You Whisper.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Mr Zindel lists 61 perceived similarities between the film and the play, which has been twice produced for US television, in 1969 and 1990. The play “tells the story of a lonely janitorial cleaning woman who works the graveyard shift at a scientific laboratory facility that performs animal experiments for military use”, according to a synopsis given in the lawsuit.

“There she becomes fascinated by a fantastic intelligent aquatic creature, held captive in a glass tank.”

Each of the events described in the synopsis also occurs in the film.

“My dad was a chemistry teacher before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author,” Mr Zindel said. “He was always so generous with his time to help and inspire students, teachers, librarians and other writers; so it came as a total shock to us that his original work would be so blatantly and extensively taken.”

But the Mexican director insisted the film was his own.

“I have never read nor seen the play,” he said. “I’d never heard of this play before making The Shape of Water and none of my collaborators ever mentioned the play.” Del Toro accepted that the play and the film have surface similarities, but said his work is not “about an animal, it’s about an elemental river god”.

He added: “These ideas are not interchangeable or equivalent. This would be tantamount to saying that ET would be the same story if you substituted the alien for a hamster.”

The suit demands that they hand over all profits from the film – which has taken more than $90 million (£65million) at the box office – as well as an unspecified amount in damages.