Jonny Greenwood's Phantom Thread music stays in Melania, producer says

Marc Beckman, a producer of the documentary Melania and Melania Trump's long-time adviser, has told Variety that Jonny Greenwood's “Barbara Rose”, from Phantom Thread, will stay in the film, two weeks after Greenwood and Paul Thomas Anderson asked for it to be taken out. The cue plays under the scene where Melania Trump walks in on her husband working on his inaugural speech and helps him with it. Beckman calls Radiohead one of his all-time favourite bands.

Melania, Brett Ratner's film for Amazon MGM Studios, follows the 20 days before the January 2025 inauguration and opened in cinemas on 30 January. Greenwood wrote “Barbara Rose” for Anderson's 2017 film. On 9 February the two of them asked for it to be removed, through Greenwood's representative. While 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.¹ Rolling Stone reported that they seemed to have found out only once the film was out.

The producers licensed the cue from Focus Gramercy Film Music, which Universal owns. Greenwood's side say his contracts always require the rights owner to tell him when his music is reused, though that gives him no power to stop it.

Beckman answered the same day, telling Breitbart News the claim was a blatant lie and that the film held fully executed contracts for every song in it. Now he says he paid top dollar for all of the film's music, and that Greenwood's side put it to him as a request to take the cue out of the streaming version on Prime Video rather than the cinema release. It is staying in both. Please tell him he's welcome to call me if he wishes to discuss. But that song is in the film forever, regardless of the infrastructure which delivers the content.³