The film The Boy, directed by Zabou Breitman and released in theaters on Wednesday, March 26, finds itself at the center of a legal dispute. Novelist Isabelle Monnin accuses the actress and director of having diverted the original idea of her book The People in the Envelope, published in 2015, to turn it into a film project without respecting the terms of their initial agreement. A writ of counterfeiting and parasitism has been filed against the production company Nolita, with a first hearing scheduled for June 3 at the Paris judicial court.
A dispute over the origin of the film and the reuse of an abandoned project
Zabou Breitman was originally supposed to adapt Isabelle Monnin's novel for the big screen. An option on the rights was purchased in 2016 by Nolita, but the project fell through due to lack of funding. The novelist now accuses the production company of continuing to develop a film based on a very similar idea, without authorization, while, according to her, reusing the book's title to obtain a public grant. The production team refutes these accusations. Their lawyer cites an "administrative error" regarding the title and claims that the screenplay for The Boy was completely rewritten. "This is not a disguised adaptation, it is an original work inspired by other photographs and driven by a different approach," assures producer Maxime Delauney.
In The People in the Envelope, Isabelle Monnin recounts buying a batch of anonymous photos from a second-hand dealer before investigating the people in them. Her story blends fiction and reality, giving voice to ordinary lives. The Boy relies on a similar device: a family album purchased at a second-hand store, from which the team attempts to reconstruct the story of a child erased from collective memory. For the author, the similarity of the starting point leaves no doubt. "What I'm asking is that my contract be respected," she declared through her lawyer. For her part, Zabou Breitman claims to have received the idea for the film from a spectator at the end of a play. The case, now in the hands of the courts, raises the sensitive issue of intellectual property when it comes to adapting an idea rather than a text.
