Filmmaker Files Lawsuit Over Allegedly Stolen Tom Petty Footage

Filmmaker Martyn Atkins has filed a lawsuit in opposition to Warner Music’s manufacturing department over their use of some allegedly stolen footage in a 2021 documentary about Tom Petty.

Tom Petty, Someplace You Really feel Free: The Making of Wildflowers was directed by Mary Wharton and featured new interviews with folks like Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers because it detailed the making of Petty’s 1994 solo album. It additionally included never-before-seen-footage, culled from hours of 16mm archival movie that Wharton was given entry to through Petty’s daughter, Adria.

“Plenty of it was dictated by what was good and what we may discover sound for,” Wharton informed UCR in 2021, chatting with how they sorted by way of the footage, as a result of, she defined.  “both the reels weren’t correctly organized afterwards or correctly labeled.”

In Atkins lawsuit, he claims that he didn’t give Warner Music, whom Petty signed with again in 1989 and stayed with till his demise in 2017, permission to make use of “a surprising 45 minutes” (through Billboard) of footage that he shot within the ’90s and that he was “not compensated in any method for the movie’s unauthorized, brazen exploitation of the works Atkins created and owns.” (The movie itself is 90 minutes lengthy.)

Atkins Met With the Tom Petty Crew

Atkins, who ceaselessly photographed Petty within the ’90s and served as his artwork director in the course of the making of Wildflowers, additionally claims that he had mentioned making a documentary movie about Petty on the time. After Petty’s demise, he met with Adria and the property representatives and was allegedly promised that he may direct a movie and due to this fact shared the file location of a lot of his materials.

“Atkins had been conned into believing he would produce and direct the movie in order that Atkins would reveal the placement of his footage to defendants,” the lawsuit claims. It additionally asserts that the producers of Someplace You Really feel Free “repeatedly misrepresented” the movie’s footage as having been “magically and unexpectedly found” earlier than getting used within the film. “The movie’s producers have systematically applied this false narrative to govern the viewing public and bolster the advertising and marketing of the movie,” the go well with reads. (Press releases from 2021 relating to the movie describe the footage as “newly found.”)

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Atkins claims that following his assembly with the Petty group, he was omitted of the loop solely.

“He was then lower out fully — in each possible respect,” the go well with says. “He was not even informed as a courtesy that his works could be misappropriated and featured, not to mention requested his consent.”