{"id":277086,"date":"2026-02-10T15:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/277086\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:26:10","slug":"paul-thomas-anderson-and-radioheads-jonny-greenwood-demand-music-to-be-removed-from-melania-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/277086\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead\u2019s Jonny Greenwood demand music to be removed from \u2018Melania\u2019 doc"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                    Published on                 10\/02\/2026 &#8211; 9:51 GMT+1\u2022Updated<br \/>\n                                     9:59\n                                        <\/p>\n<p>Director Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead\u2019s Jonny Greenwood have requested that their Phantom Thread music be removed from the Melania Trump documentary. <\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2026\/02\/03\/melania-why-the-mrs-trump-documentary-isnt-a-documentary-at-all\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melania<\/a>, a segment of music from the 2017 film <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2023\/02\/13\/valentines-day-the-alternative-viewing-guide-when-a-traditional-romcom-just-wont-do\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Phantom Thread<\/a> is played \u2013 a long excerpt of Greenwood\u2019s \u2018Barbara Rose\u2019. <\/p>\n<p>Directed by Anderson and featuring a score from Greenwood, the film was Oscar-nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Original Score. Both the director and the composer have requested that the music be removed from the Brett Ratner-directed documentary, claiming that its inclusion is a \u201cbreach\u201d of their composer agreement. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary,\u201d the pair said in a statement, which was obtained and published by <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/news\/melania-anderson-greenwood-want-phantom-thread-music-removed-1236656857\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\">Variety<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile Jonny Greenwood does not own the copyright in the score, Universal failed to consult Jonny on this third-party use which is a breach of his composer agreement,\u201d it added. \u201cAs a result Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>No one from the Melania team has yet publicly responded to the request. <\/p>\n<p>Melania strives to provide an inside look at the life of the First Lady of the United States. <\/p>\n<p>Amazon MGM paid a staggering $40m to acquire streaming rights for the film, followed by another $35m to market it in theaters \u2013 representing an unprecedented sum for a nonfiction film. These sums have prompted speculation that Amazon made the purchase to curry favour with Trump. <\/p>\n<p>The project also marks the return of Ratner to Hollywood. The director of the Rush Hour franchise moved to Israel following multiple sexual misconduct allegations in 2017. The director has also appeared in a recent release of photographs from the Epstein files. <\/p>\n<p>The film has been critically torched but did exceed box office projections in the US, earning $13.3m domestically, in large part thanks to the reported rallying of Republican women, who have made up the largest portion of the audience. <\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2026\/02\/03\/melania-why-the-mrs-trump-documentary-isnt-a-documentary-at-all\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Euronews Culture\u2019s review of Melania<\/a>, we wrote: \u201cMany were quick to accuse &#8216;Melania&#8217; of being a despicable piece of propaganda even before seeing it. It\u2019s not. Propaganda has a point. Forceful tools of hatred like Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation had evil purpose. Melania can be mentioned in the same sentence as these films but only remains as a staged puff piece, (&#8230;) a shallow, 104-minute-long vanity project whose staggeringly misjudged timing reveals it to be the ultimate &#8220;F*ck you\u201d.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Jonny Greenwood and Paul Thomas Anderson have worked together for nearly two decades, with the Radiohead guitarist writing scores for several of the director\u2019s films, including 2007\u2019s There Will Be Blood, 2012\u2019s The Master, 2021\u2019s Licorice Pizza and last year\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2025\/09\/26\/euronews-cultures-film-of-the-week-one-battle-after-another-ptas-talkin-bout-a-revolution\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">One Battle After Another<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>One Battle After Another is seen as the frontrunner \u2013 alongside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2025\/04\/18\/euronews-cultures-film-of-the-week-sinners-these-vampires-want-the-blues\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sinners<\/a> \u2013 at next month\u2019s Oscars. It is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/culture\/2026\/01\/22\/oscar-nominations-2026-sinners-makes-oscar-history-with-record-breaking-16-nods\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nominated for 13 Academy Awards<\/a>, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Score.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 10\/02\/2026 &#8211; 9:51 GMT+1\u2022Updated 9:59 Director Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead\u2019s Jonny Greenwood have requested that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9719,1741,859,156,593,3723,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-277086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-cinema","9":"tag-controversy","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-melania-trump","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}