Issa Rae is getting dragged into court after three Los Angeles creatives say her movie “One of Them Days” is lifted from their original screenplay.
Writers Joshua Isaacson, Shon Oku and Tyrone Perry claim they penned a script back in 2020 called One of Those Days and registered the copyright. Fast forward to 2025, and they say Rae’s team dropped a flick with a nearly identical title and a storyline that hits way too close to home.
The trio filed their lawsuit on July 30, naming Issa Rae’s company Color Creative, Sony Pictures, TriStar and screenwriter Syreeta Singleton. They’re accusing them of copyright infringement, idea theft, and conversion—basically saying Rae and crew jacked their story and ran with it like it was theirs.
According to court docs, the writers say they shared their screenplay with producer Danny Hamouie in late 2023, the first time anyone outside of the trio had ever seen the script.
They never heard back from Hamouie, who is not named in the lawsuit.
Next, they later handed it over to Roman Arabia and his partner Xavier Charles, who own a company called Green Eggs Go H.A.M. (GEG), in April 2024, hoping to secure some funding.
GEG passed on the project, but the twist? Charles used to work on Rae’s show Insecure. Weeks after that rejection, news broke that Issa Rae was gearing up to produce a film called One of Them Days.
The writers claim the movie, which hit theaters on January 17, 2025, copies their script’s entire flow—plot, characters, and all. They even brought in screenwriting expert John Brancato, who backed them up, saying the “underlying story structure” was way too similar.
The movie, directed by Lawrence Lamont and written by Singleton, starred Keke Palmer and SZA. It followed two friends trying to hustle up rent money.
The film pulled in over $51 million on a $14 million budget and was a box office win for Sony and TriStar. Now, the original writers want that bag. They’re asking for damages, attorneys’ fees and a jury trial to settle the dispute.
The lawsuit says the Issa Rae and others involved with the flick “misappropriated Plaintiffs’ original expression and passed it off as their own without authorization, credit, or compensation.”
Whether Rae’s crew copied or not, this case could end up costing somebody a lot more than rent money.
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