Sony Music Settles Whitney Houston Movie Lawsuit That Claimed Producers Never Paid For Songs
Sony Music has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit claiming the producers of Whitney Houston’s 2022 biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody never fully paid to use her songs.
The case, filed earlier this year, alleged that the companies behind the movie had signed deals for sync licenses to feature songs like “I Will Always Love You” in the film – but that more than a year after it was released, the label still hadn’t been paid a dime for those rights.
In a motion filed Monday in New York federal court, attorneys for Sony say they will drop the case voluntarily. The motion did not provide any terms of the apparent settlement, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Riding a wave of enthusiasm for musical biopics – 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody earned more $900 million at the box office and Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 “Elvis” made $288 million – “I Wanna Dance” was released in December 2022 to middling reviews and an underwhelming return of $59.8 million gross.
A little over a year later, Sony added a copyright lawsuit to the movie’s woes – claiming the movie had featured “some of the most iconic and popular sound recordings of all time” without properly paying for them.
The February lawsuit claimed that Anthem Films, Black Label Media and others behind the movie had signed a sync license agreement on Dec. 5, 2022 – less than ten days before the movie’s release – covering the use of Sony’s sound recordings of Houston’s songs, also including “Greatest Love of All,” “I’m Every Woman” and the titular “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
Sony argued that the producers did so because they essentially had to if they wanted to create “a biopic about the life and music of Whitney Houston.”
“Unlike other types of films, musical biopics by their nature require use of the subject musician’s music, as it is nearly impossible to explain the importance of a musician’s creative genius or unique style and talent without the use of the musician’s music,” Sony wrote.
But the label said that by August 2023, it still had not been paid anything under that deal. After notifying Anthem of the problem, the company allegedly told Sony that it was waiting on funds from a tax credit owed by the state of Massachusetts. But such a payment never came, Sony said.
“As a result of Anthem’s failure to pay the fees to SME, it is clear that there was no license or authorization to use the SME Recordings used in the Film,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “Nevertheless, the Film embodying the SME Recordings was, and continues to be, exhibited, distributed, and exploited.”
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