Warner Bros. Filed a Copyright Claim on Trump Campaign Video Over ‘Dark Knight’ Score
Yesterday, President Donald Trump tweeted a campaign video that featured, among other things, images of his enemies (including Rosie O’Donnell, Hillary Clinton, and Bryan Cranston for some reason). That’s all well and good (if pretty weird; is Trump not a Breaking Bad fan?) but it also was scored to a piece of music from The Dark Knight Rises, a film about a deranged super-villain who closes off Gotham City from the rest of the world and rules with an iron fist until Batman, who’s been injured elsewhere, returns to stop him.
Whatever you think of The Dark Knight Rises, using its copyrighted music without the copyright holder’s approval (and also maybe paying for the rights) is a big no-no, and so Warner Bros, the studio that owns Batman and The Dark Knight Rises, took action. By this morning, the video was gone from Twitter (although it had already been viewed several million times by that point). In a statement to Buzzfeed, Warner Bros. said "The use of Warner Bros.’ score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized," a spokesperson said. "We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”
While Warner Bros. might have been miffed about an unauthorized political use of their music, at least one person was a big fan. Bryan Cranston tweeted a response to his appearance in the video, writing “Hell yes! I finally became a villain in the bizzaro underworld of the @realdonaldtrump. I can’t say that I understand what I’m doing in it, but I seem to have a high disapproval rating from the President. Hmmm, cool. Hey, do I get residuals from this movie?”
You do not, Bryan. And if you do, Warner Bros. has to get paid first.
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