Director of Pharrell Williams biopic calls musician’s Blurred Lines case “one of the worst judicial decisions about creativity in history”Morgan Neville, the director of Pharrell Williams’ upcoming Piece By Piece LEGO biopic, has explained why the film does not feature Blurred Lines and the infamous plagiarism trial surrounding the track.

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Released in 2013, Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines – which Williams co-wrote and produced – was embroiled in a long-running copyright case that left both musicians owing millions to the Marvin Gaye estate.
Gaye’s family accused the pair, along with rapper T.I. of ripping off Gaye’s 1977 hit single Got To Give It Up. The court eventually ruled that Thicke and Williams were liable for copyright infringement, awarding Gaye’s estate over $7 million in damages, an amount that was later reduced to $5.3 million.
Speaking to the BBC, director Morgan Neville says he decided to leave the Grammy-award-winning track (and its controversies) out of the film’s final cut because the sequence had derailed the story he was trying to tell.
“I definitely thought about it. I even interviewed Robin Thicke,” he says. “And as a documentary filmmaker, I’m obsessed with copyright law. But every time I looked at trying to work it in, a scene about copyright law, it felt like it belonged in a different movie.”
“My take on the Blurred Lines case is that it’s one of the worst judicial decisions about creativity in history,” Neville adds. “I think Pharrell was in the right on it, and I think most creatives agree with him.”
“It’s not like Pharrell learned a big lesson from the case. I don’t know if it actually changed him in any way, which is what I’m looking for, when I’m looking at a story.”

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