Writer of original script behind Yesterday accuses rom-com giant Richard Curtis and wife Emma Freud of 'erasing' him as £125m Beatles hit heads to West End

He told millions of cinemagoers that love was all around.

But it appears there is no love lost between Richard Curtis and the screenwriter who says he created the story behind his £125million box office hit Yesterday.

American writer Jack Barth has branded Curtis, 69, and his wife Emma Freud, 64, ‘arrogant pigs’ and accused the powerful couple of ‘systematically scrubbing’ his contribution as they take the Beatles blockbuster to the West End.

Mr Barth claims he has never been contacted about the musical, despite it already having gone through two workshops and 11 drafts, with a theatre selected and a third workshop planned this month.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: ‘I feel it's rather despicable of them to have gotten this far without ever contacting me.

‘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.’

In a blistering attack on the couple, Barth 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 to come to believe the lie that all they took from me was a one-sentence pitch.

‘And often they don’t even credit me for that.'

The row erupted after Freud announced this week that The Beatles had granted permission for their songs to feature in the stage production, which will be written by her and Curtis and directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle.

Calling the agreement a ‘huge deal’, she said it would be the first time audiences could ‘kind of legally see The Beatles’ music’ in a West End musical.

Mr Barth wrote Cover Version in 2012, which told the story of a struggling musician who discovers he is the only person alive who remembers The Beatles and begins passing their songs off as his own.

With help from actor and writer Mackenzie Crook, he developed the screenplay before it was acquired by Working Title, the British production company behind Curtis hits including Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill.

The 2019 film, starring Himesh Patel, Lily James and Ed Sheeran, was directed by Boyle and made more than £125million at the worldwide box office.

Mr Barth received only a joint ‘story by’ credit with Curtis, while Curtis was given sole credit for the screenplay.

Working Title previously said Barth had been ‘well paid’ for his ‘great idea’ and that Curtis had written a screenplay based on his original concept.

Mr Barth now claims he is due only a ‘shockingly low’ fixed payment for the stage adaptation and will receive no share of its profits.

The writer also revealed that he instructed a lawyer in 2019 to pursue a claim over the damage he believed he had suffered, but alleged that ‘Curtis et al refused to make amends.'

Mr Barth now wants his original contribution publicly recognised, saying: ‘I would like them to acknowledge their systematic scrubbing of my contribution and their past bad behaviour in all respects.

'And a little renegotiation of my profit participation wouldn’t go amiss.'

Representatives for Curtis, Freud and Working Title were contacted for comment.