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EXCLUSIVE: After decades of legal wars between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow and various jurisdictions over child sexual assault charges against Oscar-winning director, HBO’s Allen vs. Farrow documentaries may have opened up a whole new battlefield.
Skyhorse Publishing is seriously considering a copyright infringement lawsuit against the premium cable maker and filmmakers behind the four-part docuseries for unauthorized use of audio from Allen’s 2020 memoir. About nothing.
“Neither the producers nor HBO have ever approached Skyhorse to request permission to use excerpts from the audiobook,” the publishing company told Deadline on Monday.
“Skyhorse received second-hand information only at the very end of last week that each of the documentary’s four episodes made extensive use of audio book clips,” Skyhorse added.
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“Quickly, on Friday February 19, our attorney informed HBO’s in-house counsel by letter that if the use of the audiobook was close to what we heard, it would be in violation of copyright. HBO did not respond to our letter. “
“Having now seen the first episode, we believe that its unauthorized use of the audiobook is a clear and willful violation of existing legal precedent, and that the other episodes will also violate if they appropriate the audiobook in the same way.” Skyhorse continued. .
“We will take whatever legal action we deem necessary to remedy our rights and those of Woody Allen to his intellectual property.”
Skyhorse would not give details of their future plans beyond its deadline statement. HBO did not respond to requests for comment on the letter when contacted before the deadline.
Snippets of the memoir narrated by Allen appear throughout HBO’s four docuseries, including over three minutes in the first episode alone. The fair use doctrine, which allows copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain news stories, reviews and other specific formats, generally allows less than 10 seconds of said copyrighted material. are included in a project.
Allen vs. Farrow Filmmakers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick got full access to Mia Farrow and her daughter Dylan Farrow for Allen vs. Farrow, which covers their child sexual assault charges against Allen, and how the filmmaker got a hold on the legal system.
Since the charge was laid in 1992, Allen has denied any irregularities with his adopted daughter Dylan, who was 7 at the time of the alleged assault.
Earlier, Deadline reported on Skyhorse’s official statement regarding the use of HBO. About nothing “without authorization.” Ziering and Dick used parts of the audiobook, which Allen reads, to represent his side in the docuseries. This was after the filmmakers contacted Allen, his wife Soon-Yi Previn and Moses Farrow to participate in the documentary.
On Sunday evening, a spokesperson for Allen and Previn said they had been “approached less than two months ago and had only had a few days to” respond “. Of course, they refused to do so. Spokesman for Allen and Previn also said, “These documentary filmmakers weren’t interested in the truth. Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with lies.
Allen’s memoir was originally scheduled to be published by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, the same publisher of his son Ronan Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein investigative novel. Catch and kill. Farrow called Hachette and there was a strike by 75 publisher employees to protest the publication of Allen’s autobiography. After Hachette canceled publication of the brief, Skyhorse picked it up under its Arcade Publishing brand in March 2020.
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