Amazon MGM’s ‘Melania’ Documentary Under Fire for Stolen Music

Photo Credit: Jonny Greenwood performing with Radiohead by Raph_PH / CC by 2.0

Amazon MGM’s Melania Trump documentary has been called to remove a piece of music taken from a film without authorization.

On Monday, director Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood released a statement calling for Melania Trump’s documentary, Melania, to remove a piece of music from the pair’s 2017 film, Phantom Thread. The music’s unauthorized use in the film is just the latest misstep for the Amazon MGM project, which has been unable to recoup much of its exorbitant budget.

“It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary,” wrote Anderson and Greenwood in a joint statement released by Greenwood’s rep on Monday. “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.”

Amazon MGM purchased the documentary in a bidding war for $40 million, and then injected another $35 million into marketing it. The film raked in only $11.8 million at the domestic box office after opening in 2,000 theaters nationwide. Amazon and MGM added another 200 theaters leading up to the Super Bowl after an opening weekend in which it earned $7.2 million. However, its earnings dropped by a whopping 67% in its second week.

The Brett Ratner-directed documentary used an allegedly unauthorized extended excerpt from Phantom Thread’s “Barbara Rose,” from the film’s Oscar-nominated score. Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was the fourth of seven collaborations between the 55-year-old Anderson and the 54-year-old Greenwood. Their most recent collaboration was One Battle After Another, for which Greenwood is up for an Academy Award.

Ratner’s Melania documentary, which follows the First Lady in the days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration, is currently still playing in over 2,000 theaters nationwide, and will soon be available to stream on demand on Amazon Prime.