A play's estate sued over a film, then the case reopened and closed

The image

The dispute concerns the relationship between two works rather than one image: Paul Zindel's 1969 stage play Let Me Hear You Whisper and Guillermo del Toro's 2017 film The Shape of Water. The court's order recites, from the complaint, that both works tell of 'a lonely cleaning woman working at a laboratory that performs animal experiments for military purposes,' who discovers 'an aquatic creature of advanced intelligence confined to a glass tank,' forms a relationship with it, and smuggles it out 'in a laundry cart' to release it. The complaint listed 61 points of alleged similarity between the two works; the order treats that list as the plaintiff's pleaded allegation, not as a finding of fact.

What the documents show

David Zindel, as trustee for his father's literary trusts, sued Fox Searchlight Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, TSG Entertainment, Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus, and MacMillan Publishers on 21 February 2018, alleging direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement. On 23 July 2018, Judge Percy Anderson granted the defendants' motions to dismiss, concluding as a matter of law that 'although there are some minor similarities, the Film and the Book are not substantially similar to the Play,' and dismissed the action with prejudice. Court docket records show Zindel appealed to the Ninth Circuit, that the case was reopened on the district court's docket on 7 August 2020 following a Ninth Circuit mandate directing the defendants to answer the complaint, and that the parties stipulated to dismiss the case on 2 April 2021. No document opened for this entry records a final merits ruling after the case reopened.

Production context

The district court's 2018 order works through named story beats, character type, setting, plot device, one at a time, comparing the play and film's alleged elements rather than surface visual similarity; that structure documents how a substantial-similarity analysis proceeds for narrative elements shared between a stage play and a film, distinct from comparing a design sketch, a costume, or a shot composition. The order's reasoning rests on story and character comparison, not on visual reference material.

Reference versus imitation

Accurate reference means stating that a district court initially found no substantial similarity and dismissed the case with prejudice, that it was later reopened following an appellate mandate, and that it ended in a stipulated dismissal rather than a further ruling, rather than treating the 2018 order as the story's final word. Nothing reviewed here supports describing either party as having acted wrongly; the record shows an initial dismissal, a reopening, and a stipulated end.

• Does a summary of this case cite the 2018 dismissal, the later reopening, or both, accurately in sequence?
• Which specific alleged similarities does the court's own order list, versus similarities added by later commentary?
• Does a claim about the case's outcome match the docket's own final stipulated-dismissal entry?

The Zindel litigation, read from the court's own order and docket, documents a substantial-similarity dispute over narrative elements that was dismissed, reopened, and ultimately closed by stipulation, a sequence worth stating in full rather than truncating at its first ruling.