Director M Night Shyamalan went on trial on Tuesday (14 January) over allegations that he plagiarised from an independent film for his Apple TV + series Servant.

The $81m (£66m) lawsuit brought by Italian director Francesca Gregorini accuses Shyamalan of taking key elements from her 2013 film The Truth about Emanuel.

His psychological horror series, Servant, follows the story of a couple who hire an eighteen-year-old girl to help them look after a child. It transpires that the child is dead, and has been replaced by a reborn doll, which the traumatised mother still believes is alive.

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Gregorini alleges that the film shares substantial similarities to hers. She originally sued in January 2000, shortly after the series was released. The case was thrown out by a federal judge in the first instance, but was revived in 2022 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who found a genuine dispute over whether the works were in fact “substantially similar”.

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The jury in the case will be required to watch both The Truth about Emanuel and the first three episodes of Servant, back-to-back before the attorneys of both respective parties make their case.