Paul Thomas Anderson and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood have requested that their Phantom Thread music be removed from the Melania Trump documentary.
Titled Melania, the documentary follows the 20 day period before her husband, Donald Trump, was sworn into office for the second time last January.
Amazon, Disney, Netflix and Paramount Pictures all bid for the streaming rights, and while Disney offered about $14million (£10.2million), it lost out to Amazon’s $40million (£29.3million) bid – the highest amount ever paid for a documentary. The First Lady said the warm reception to her 2024 self-titled memoir prompted her to come up with the idea.
In the documentary, which arrived in cinemas last month, a segment of music from the 2017 film Phantom Thread is reportedly played. That movie was directed by Anderson and featured a score from Greenwood.
Both have now requested that it be removed from Melania, and claimed that it is a “breach” of their composer agreement.
“It has come to our attention that a piece of music from Phantom Thread has been used in the Melania documentary,” the pair said in a statement, which was obtained and published by Variety.
“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,” it added. “As a result Jonny and Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for it to be removed from the documentary.”
Those behind Melania have not yet publicly responded to the request, and at time of writing, it still remains in the documentary.
Last week, it was revealed that the Brett Ratner-directed film had opened at Number 29 at the UK box office – making just under £33,000 in its first week.
Around that same time, figures emerged that it had earned $9.5million (£7million) globally at the box office from a budget of $40million, plus a reported $35million (£25.6million) extra in marketing, according to The Independent.
While this is a particularly high figure for a documentary, some have contested the legitimacy of it, and The Daily Beast reported accusations of “fake tickets sales” made to boost the movie’s fortunes.
In the US, 49 per cent of the opening day audience identified as Republicans, only two per cent identified as Democrats, and the audience was 72 per cent female.
It currently stands at an eight per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jonny Greenwood and Paul Thomas Anderson have worked together for nearly two decades now, with the Radiohead star also writing scores for Anderson’s films including 2012’s The Master, 2021’s Licorice Pizza, and most recently, 2025’s One Battle After Another.
The latter was nominated for Best Original Score at the 2026 Golden Globes, but lost out to Ludwig Goransson and his work on Sinners.
