A filmmaker is suing Warner Music over the 2021 Tom Petty documentary Somewhere You Feel Free , calling the movie a “brazen exploitation” that used nearly an hour of his copyrighted film footage without permission. In a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles federal court, Martyn Atkins says he never gave the Somewhere producers consent to use hours of footage he filmed of the music legend during the 1990s but that the movie nonetheless contained “a shocking 45 minutes” of his materials. “Atkins did not provide consent, did not otherwise license any of the footage, and was not compensated in any manner for the Film’s unauthorized, brazen exploitation of the works Atkins created and owns,” his attorneys wrote in a June 18 complaint.
Released in March 2021, Somewhere You Feel Free promised viewers “never-before-seen footage” of Petty as he worked on his 1994 album Wildflowers . Much of the footage was filmed by Atkins, who served as art director for the album and says he often documented the proceedings with a 16mm camera. Later, Atkins says he and the music legend watched the footage and discussed eventually using it to create such a documentary.
But after Petty’s tragic death in 2017, the project didn’t come together until 2020, when Atkins says he was invited to a meeting with Petty’s daughter and other reps from his estate. After they promised him the job of directing the upcoming documentary, Atkins says, he provided them with a detailed breakdown o.
