LOS ANGELES — A screenwriter is suing director Alexander Payne, alleging that the Oscar winner rewrote his script “Frisco” to become “The Holdovers.”

Simon Stephenson, a screenwriter behind “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” and “Luca,” is accusing Payne of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California federal court. In court documents obtained by The Times, Stephenson alleges that he wrote “Frisco” based on his experiences as a pediatrician and uploaded it to the industry platform “The Black List,” where it was ranked the third-best unproduced screenplay in 2013.

The same year, the suit alleges agents for Stephenson sent the script to Payne, who declined the project. They sent it a second time in 2019, and Payne passed again, according to the civil complaint.

“But in 2022, he finally made Stephenson’s screenplay,” the lawsuit reads.…