Among its other accomplishments, Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is pretty much soundtrack porn, offering up a smooth, perfectly choreographed set of tunes to rob a bank to (or however you choose to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon). But that same soundtrack has now gotten Sony into (non-heist-based) legal trouble, with the son of Marc Bolan—a.k.a the front man for T.Rex, whose song “Debora” plays a major part in the film’s plot—suing the company over accusations that it failed to clear the song with him or his family for use in the film.
This is per The Wrap, which notes that one arm of Sony did try to contact the rightsholders for “Debora,” since Bolan’s son, Rolan Feld, only learned that the song was being used when Sony Music contacted him for its use on the soundtrack album. But Feld contends that nobody tried to clear the song for its use in the film itself, and the suit claims that “Sony responded with a series of conflicting explanations, claims that other parties were liable for the infringement, and requests for more time to investigate the matter” when Feld contacted them.
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.
The suit alleges that someone at Sony—or possibly studio Media Rights Capital, which The Wrap says was supposedly responsible for clearing music for the film—dropped the ball when it came time to license the movie’s extensive soundtrack. Meanwhile, we can only assume this is also at least somewhat mortifying for Wright, given the care and attention he gave to selecting the movie’s tunes.