{"id":115647,"date":"2025-11-04T22:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/115647\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T22:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:18:12","slug":"big-budget-f1-netflix-miniseries-senna-sparks-copyright-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/115647\/","title":{"rendered":"Big-Budget F1 Netflix Miniseries ‘Senna’ Sparks Copyright Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNetflix<\/a> has been drawn into a copyright battle over Brazilian Formula One miniseries Senna by author Lauren Wild, who alleges that the title rips off a script he wrote when he was in talks to be the showrunner for the production.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show follows the life and career of Ayrton Senna leading up to his death at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. He\u2019s something of an icon in the sport, regularly recognized as among the best drivers of all time. Eager to draw the global F1 crowd, Netflix reportedly<\/a> dropped north of $170 million into the series. It was filmed in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, with Gullane producing the title.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his lawsuit, Wild says that he met in 2013 then-Sony Pictures exec T. Paul Miller, who expressed interest about a project he was developing around Senna. Years later, Miller, now at Warner Bros. Entertainment handling international<\/a> content strategy, introduced him to Andrew Lazar (American Sniper) to discuss a Senna feature being handled by Gullane.<\/p>\n

\n\tWild was told that Gullane\u2019s script needed major revisions, which led him to start working with Warner Bros. about coming onto the production, the lawsuit says. The studio later sent Wild\u2019s treatment of the script and his other work on Senna to Gabriel Lacerda, a producer for Gullane. Due to the volume of content, plans shifted from a feature to a miniseries, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom 2016 to 2018, Wild wrote 11 episodes for the show, titled \u201cBuilt for Speed: Senna,\u201d which has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and Writers Guild of America. At Lacerda\u2019s request, Wild sent the producer the first six episodes of his script. Around this time, Fabiano Gullane, a partner at the production company, offered him a job as the showrunner of the miniseries and cowriter on a Senna feature, per the lawsuit. Wild retained a lawyer to negotiate a deal. Preliminary terms of a deal were drafted but no formal agreement materialized.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur goal is to be able to count with everything that you already researched and wrote, on top of your active participation in the writer\u2019s room for both the series and the movie,\u201d Gullane told Wild, the lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal court claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in 2019, Gullane ceased communications with Wild, according to the complaint. He was informed that the production company was shifting resources to a separate and unrelated show.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024, Netflix released six-part series Senna, which Wild alleges is \u201csubstantially similar\u201d to his work. The writer, who released a book of the same name as his TV script last year, points to several characters and events he made up in his treatment that were included in the show. He faults Netflix for conducting \u201clittle to no due diligence before greenlighting\u201d the series.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit brings claims for copyright infringement, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment and unjust enrichment. It seeks a court order blocking Gullane and Netflix, which declined to comment, from further exploiting the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series was directed by Vicente Amori and J\u00falia Rezende and written by \u00c1lvaro Campos, Gustavo Bragan\u00e7a and Rafael Sp\u00ednola, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netflix has been drawn into a copyright battle over Brazilian Formula One miniseries Senna by author Lauren Wild,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,399,46,400],"class_list":["post-115647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-international","tag-israel","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}