Richard Curtis and his wife branded "arrogant pigs" as criticism of 2019 rom-com resurfaces

Richard Curtis and his wife Emma Freud have been labelled "arrogant pigs" by the writer whose script inspired the movie Yesterday. The 2019 rom-com focuses on a musician who becomes the only person to remember The Beatles, and passes off the band's music as his own.

Jack Barth, whose 2012 screenplay called Cover Version served as the inspiration for the movie, has a story credit on the eventual film, the screenplay of which is credited to Curtis.

It was recently confirmed by Freud, who is an associate producer on the movie and is also Curtis's wife, that a stage musical adaptation is in the works and that The Beatles had agreed to let their music be used.

However, Barth has hit out at the couple, accusing them of not contacting him around the stage play, which is in the workshop stage.

"I feel it’s rather despicable of them to have gotten this far without ever contacting me," he told the Daily Mail. "Though if you read the backstory, you’ll see this has been a pattern from the beginning.

"They’ve done everything in their immense power to obscure my contribution and divert all the credit for my ideas over to Mr Curtis. No doubt they will once again attempt to erase me. My only hope for any satisfaction is taking it to the court of public opinion."

He added: "Curtis and Freud come from such immense privilege and power and have achieved a level of success so incommensurate with their actual abilities that they have come to believe that all they took from me was a one-sentence pitch. And often they don’t even credit me for that."

In the interview, Barth further claimed he is getting a "shockingly low" fixed payment for the musical, with no share of the profits. He also said he got a lawyer to pursue a claim in 2019 over the damage he believed he suffered, which ultimately failed.

"I would like them to acknowledge their systematic scrubbing of my contribution and their past bad behaviour in all respects," he said. "And a little renegotiation of my profit participation wouldn’t go amiss."

In a follow-up post on X regarding the musical, he wrote: "I wonder if these arrogant pigs will ever notify me that the story I created is becoming a huge West End musical."

Digital Spy has reached out to Curtis and Freud's representatives for comment.

As alluded to, this isn't the first time that Barth has hit out at the couple, accusing Curtis of "taking credit for everything" in a 2019 interview with Uproxx (via The Playlist), alleging it has diminished his own opportunities in the industry.

"This is why I’m so upset," he said. "This is why I actually feel like Richard has damaged me financially. I write and say, ‘I’m the guy who created the film Yesterday,’ and they look and they go, ‘No, you’re not, that’s a Richard Curtis movie, you moron."

He also claimed that many of the specifics from his original script ended up in the final cut, sharing: "I could see that he was taking credit for everything. I think I could have done something then but I didn’t want to jeopardise the film. I got lawyers to contact Richard’s lawyers and they just dragged it out."

However, Curtis claimed in multiple interviews that he only heard the basic concept for the movie, telling Den of Geek in 2019: "I had the one sentence then said I don’t want any more information because I sometimes found when I worked with original material that it doesn’t come from the heart."

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Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International.  Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.