Marc Bolan’s Son Files Lawsuit Over ‘Baby Driver’ Soundtrack
Baby Driver is one of the more acclaimed films of the year, and more than a few critics have singled out its soundtrack for particular praise. But director Edgar Wright's song selection — and the way the studio went about using the music — are now the focus of a lawsuit filed by Marc Bolan's son Rolan Feld.
The suit was prompted by Baby Driver's use of the T. Rex track "Debora," which serves as a major plot point in the movie when its protagonist (played by Ansel Elgort) shares it with a love interest (Lily James) who happens to share the same name. It's all the more surprising, then, that Sony Pictures allegedly neglected to secure a license to use the track.
"Inexplicably, Defendants failed to obtain — or even seek — the permission of the composition’s U.S. copyright holder, Rolan Feld," reads a portion of Feld's filing complaint (which you can read in full). "In the six weeks since Feld brought this infringement to Defendant Sony’s attention, Defendants have done little more than point fingers at one another — and they have neither apologized nor offered to pay Feld a reasonable license fee."
More perplexing still is Feld's assertion that he only found out about "Debora" being used in Baby Driver after a Sony rep reached out to his lawyer — a surreal example of the way different divisions of the same giant company can operate independently in ignorance of each other.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this is bound to be a major disappointment for Wright, who — at least publicly — asserted the importance of getting the many songs in the movie locked down before cameras even rolled.
"Even before the movie was at Sony, we had sort of quietly started clearing the tracks. Because, you know, if you’re going to do a movie called Baby Driver and try and use that song, you should approach them way ahead of time to make sure that that’s okay," Wright pointed out. "You don’t want to be in a situation where you’ve made the movie and Simon & Garfunkel are saying, 'Come on, pay up. We know you want this.'"
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