Filmmaker Martyn Atkins has filed a lawsuit versus Warner Music’s manufacturing branch in excess of their use of some allegedly stolen footage in a 2021 documentary about Tom Petty.

Tom Petty, Someplace You Truly really feel Cost-no cost: The Earning of Wildflowers was directed by Mary Wharton and highlighted new interviews with people like Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers as it certain the generating of Petty’s 1994 solo album. It also integrated under no circumstances-in advance of-observed-footage, culled from hrs of 16mm archival film that Wharton was presented acquire to via Petty’s daughter, Adria.

“A ton of it was dictated by what was superior and what we could obtain sound for,” Wharton advised UCR in 2021, speaking to how they sorted via the footage, due to the fact, she defined.  “either the reels had been not appropriately structured afterwards or thoroughly labeled.”

In Atkins lawsuit, he statements that he did not give Warner Audio, whom Petty signed with once more in 1989 and stayed with ideal till his death in 2017, permission to use “a surprising 45 minutes” (by way of Billboard) of footage that he shot in the ’90s and that he was “not compensated in any way for the film’s unauthorized, brazen exploitation of the is effective Atkins made and owns.” (The film by itself is 90 minutes extended.)

Atkins Fulfilled With the Tom Petty Group

Atkins, who consistently photographed Petty in the ’90s and served as his art director for the duration of the earning of Wildflowers, also promises that he knowledgeable pointed out earning a documentary film about Petty at the time. Just right after Petty’s demise, he accomplished with Adria and the estate associates and was allegedly promised that he could quick a film and consequently shared the file region of significantly of his supplies.

“Atkins had been conned into believing he would make and direct the film so that Atkins would expose the place of his footage to defendants,” the lawsuit promises. It also asserts that the producers of Someplace You Truly really feel Cost-no cost “frequently misrepresented” the film’s footage as getting been “magically and unexpectedly learned” ideal ahead of becoming made use of in the motion image. “The film’s producers have systematically applied this untrue narrative to manipulate the viewing general public and bolster the advertising and marketing of the movie,” the match reads. (Press releases from 2021 relating to the film clarify the footage as “newly found out.”)

Read Much much more: The Ideal Music From Each and each and every Tom Petty Album

Atkins promises that pursuing his meeting with the Petty group, he was nevertheless left out of the loop totally.

“He was then cut out fully — in each and every possible regard,” the match says. “He was not even explained to as a courtesy that his functions would be misappropriated and featured, let alone requested his consent.”