Guillermo del Toro is pushing back against claims that he and the rest of the team behind his Oscar-nominated film The Shape of Water plagiarized a 1969 play called Let Me Hear You Whisper.

“I have never read nor seen the play,” del Toro told Deadline on Wednesday. “I’d never heard of this play before making The Shape of Water, and none of my collaborators ever mentioned the play.”

Del Toro’s denial arrives shortly after the estate of Paul Zindel, the late Pulitzer-winning playwright who wrote Let Me Hear You Whisper, filed a lawsuit against del Toro, Fox Searchlight, and associate producer Daniel Kraus, who gave del Toro the idea for the film back in 2011. The Zindel suit was filed in U.S. District Court by Marc Toberoff, and claims that The Shape of Water “brazenly copies” the play.

Fox Searchlight released a statement to Deadline, writing that the claims “are baseless, wholly without merit, and we will be filing a motion to dismiss. Furthermore, the estate’s complaint seems timed to coincide with the Academy Award voting cycle in order to pressure our studio to quickly settle. Instead, we will vigorously defend ourselves and, by extension, this groundbreaking and original film.”

Del Toro previously told the magazine Written By that The Shape of Water was inspired by a conversation he had with Kraus, who suggested making a movie about “a janitor that kidnaps an amphibian-man from a secret government facility.” The plot is similar in nature to that of Let Me Hear You Whisper, which is about a soft-spoken cleaning lady who works in a lab and befriends an intelligent dolphin, learning how to communicate with him and later plotting to rescue him from the facility after she learns the scientists want to dissect his brain. The Shape of Water is about a mute cleaning lady (played by Sally Hawkins) who works in a lab, befriends a magical fish-man, and later devises a plot to rescue him.

Del Toro told Deadline that Kraus “repeatedly said that he was not influenced by the play; he didn’t know the play and has not seen the play, and that is the reason we are going to court.”

Despite the current controversy, the film has been embraced by the industry, picking up 13 Oscar nominations, including double nods for del Toro for best director and best screenplay (he co-wrote the film with Vanessa Taylor). The fact that the suit arrives just as final Oscar voting begins seems particularly telling for del Toro.