‘Tetris’ ‘The Blind Side’ Litigation Expose The Dark Side Of Biopics

Making a movie about real-life events – otherwise known as biopics – can lead to inspirational and Oscar-worthy results. But the path getting there can lend itself to a field of legal, ethical and creative issues and controversy. Debate within the biographical film sphere has sprouted most recently within the litigation around Tetris, the 2023 Apple TV+ original film that chronicles the story of the players and business behind the world-famous video game of the same name. Last week, author Dan Ackerman alleged that the movie’s was effectively based on his historical 2016 book, The Tetris Effect, pointing to his initial submission of the book to the Tetris Company as the smoking gun.

But the games don’t stop there. Conversely, similar discourse has arisen around the 2009 film, The Blind Side. Based on the story of Michael Oher, this film follows a Black teen football player who overcomes financial hardship and is drafted into the National Football League with the support of Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy – an upper-class white family in his community. Years after the accolades and success of The Blind Side, its real-life film subject Oher, is alleging that he was robbed out of the profits of the film’s success due to the Tuohy’s acting as a conservatorship to execute life rights agreements on his behalf.

On the path to converting a life story from script to screen, creators are challenged with what they need in order to tell their version of a story. The consistent elements that are blind spots and may lead to dark and unfortunate conflict, litigation or public judgment are as follows:

Be Honest With the Rights You Have and Very Careful With the Rights You Don’t Have

Biopics in recent years have led to successful features, documentaries and series. From Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty to Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody and Flamin’ Hot, audiences love to get swept away into true stories about iconic names.

The challenge is not every producer or studio can obtain a pristine set of rights from every person that touches a story. And that is exactly where creative forces must elegantly lock arms with legal to decide what rights are necessary and what rights are not.

Biopics sometimes stem from an article, a book, a grant of life rights from a key subject. But it is a misnomer that simply having the source material means you are fully covered. You are not. The rights that one does not obtain are then forced to rely on a first amendment right to tell a story that is in the public domain and can be told without a direct written consent from the party that is depicted.

The spectrum of this for documentaries is far more flexible than in scripted. In any event, creatives must filter their vision and script through a strict legal analysis to make sure that they are not stepping into a blatant claim from an individual where creative liberty may step into a defamation, misappropriation or even copyright infringement claim.

Be Wary of the Storytellers from the Actual Story Itself

With the blinding lights of Hollywood, conduits and exploitive people around a story can attempt to sell more than what they actually have to give. Looking to Oher’s situation, his allegations suggest that perhaps the Tuohy’s orchestrated their goodwill to be at the forefront of the limelight into what ultimately became The Blind Side.

As a legal advisor in this space, one tries to balance diligence with our creators against the sensitivity to work with those that may be close to the story. One needs to ensure that the guardian, estate, best friend or whoever is involved is, in fact, who they say they are in order to get the rights from someone who has the actual right to grant.

This can be a challenge in the intimacy of complicated family dynamics, unresolved estates or even hyperbolic individuals who embolden their affiliation to a story. In that regard, both the creator and lawyer need to work hand in hand to sleuth just enough to ensure what they are buying is authentic and has real access and rights that will be meaningful, and a value add to the ultimate story.

The Moral Defense is Sometimes More Crucial

Despite a deep bench of lawyers, when all is said and done your project may be the legal Fort Knox of rights and fair use defenses. If it cannot pass public judgement, then you have a PR nightmare of a problem.

Producers who are cognizant that the endorsement of family members or key participants in a story tend to ride the rights wave with more grace and fewer allegations of exploit or discredit to their story. That being said, sometimes the unauthorized biopic is just that, the producer has made a choice to fall on public domain and tell a story, knowing fully well that the subject may publicly denounce its existence. Generally, the more elevated a project is (particularly in the narrative feature space), the more necessary it is to get the sign off from family members. Think about the Presley family walking the red carpet for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, or tennis player Venus Williams’ praise for Reinaldo Marcus Green’s biopic of her father and coach, King Richard, or A.B. Quintanilla, who commended Netflix’s
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Selena: The Series for its portrayal of his late sister and singer Selena Quintanilla.