Director and composer of 2017 drama allege breach of agreement after score reused in controversial documentary
Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the director and composer, respectively, for Phantom Thread, have requested that music from the 2017 film be removed from the controversial new documentary on Melania Trump.
“It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary,” the pair said in a statement to Variety. “While Jonny Greenwood does not own the copyright in the score, Universal failed to consult Jonny on this third-party use which is a breach of his composer agreement. As a result Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary.”
Melania, directed by Brett Ratner, purports to provide an inside look at the life of the former Melania Knauss, the Slovenian model who married Donald Trump and now serves as first lady of the United States. It has been uniformly panned by critics as dull and unrevealing; in a rare zero-star review, the Guardian’s Xan Brooks called it “deadly”, “dispiriting” and “one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality”.
