{"id":644147,"date":"2026-08-18T19:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644147\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:35:13","slug":"paramount-settles-lawsuit-over-rihanna-song-from-smurfs-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644147\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Settles Lawsuit Over Rihanna Song From \u2018Smurfs\u2019 Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA lawsuit over a Rihanna<\/a> track from last year\u2019s Smurfs movie \u2014 filed by a Grammy-nominated songwriter who claimed Paramount Pictures never paid him for writing it because it was \u201cmad\u201d at the superstar for budget overruns \u2014 has ended in a settlement.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"LOS<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tR\u00d8MANS<\/strong> (Sam Roman<\/strong>), who co-wrote Lewis Capaldi<\/a>\u2019s 2018 chart-topper \u201cSomeone You Loved,\u201d sued the studio earlier this year<\/a>, claiming Paramount had used his song \u201cAnyone\u201d in the movie without his authorization and without \u201cpaying him a dime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in court filings Monday obtained and first reported by Billboard, attorneys for both sides told a judge they had \u201csigned a written confidential settlement agreement\u201d to end the dispute. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment. Rihanna was not accused of wrongdoing nor involved in the litigation.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoman, who has co-written music with Ed Sheeran<\/a>, Camila Cabello<\/a>, Demi Lovato<\/a>, Maroon 5<\/a>, Alicia Keys<\/a> and Calvin Harris<\/a>, claimed in his lawsuit that Paramount first approached him in 2022 about writing a song for the Smurfs movie. He said the studio pitched him that it would be performed by Rihanna, be heavily promoted as part of the movie, and that he would retain \u201csignificant backend royalties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as the release of the film neared, Roman said he was told that \u201cAnyone\u201d would not be released commercially after all \u2014 a change that he said fundamentally altered the economics of the deal and caused negotiations to be \u201ccompletely halted.\u201d With no deal in place, he alleged Paramount \u201castoundingly\u201d decided to simply release Smurfs anyway, with his uncleared music in \u201ckey scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jon<\/p>\n

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\n\tRoman said that in the aftermath of the movie\u2019s release, Paramount then chose to \u201cblame Rihanna\u201d for the debacle. The studio allegedly told him that it was \u201cvery frustrated by the money it had supposedly spent on Rihanna\u2019s participation\u201d and that it felt it had \u201cnot gotten an appropriate return from her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cParamount took the tack common to a toddler confronted with wrongdoing: Blame someone else. In this case, blame Rihanna,\u201d Roman\u2019s lawyer wrote at the time. \u201cParamount decided to punish plaintiff \u2014 and brazenly infringe his copyrights by using them without consent and without paying him a dime \u2014 because the studio was mad at Rihanna.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSmurfs, a live-action\/animated hybrid, was released last summer to largely negative reviews and was a box-office flop, reportedly losing $80 million for Paramount. In addition to \u201cAnyone,\u201d Roman says he also wrote a second song \u2014 \u201cAlways on the Outside,\u201d as performed by James Corden<\/strong> \u2014 that was also used without his permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawsuit over a Rihanna track from last year\u2019s Smurfs movie \u2014 filed by a Grammy-nominated songwriter who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[264],"tags":[22217,30258,18,117,1883,22921,19,17,721,48903,337,2624],"class_list":["post-644147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bbnews","tag-copyright","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-genre-pop","tag-genre-rb","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-legal","tag-legal-news","tag-music","tag-music-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117118194691525099","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}