Beyoncé faces lawsuit over claims Lemonade trailer 'copied' ideas

When life gives you Lemonade lawsuits … Beyoncé. Photograph: Frank Micelotta/Invision for Parkwood Entertainm

A filmmaker has issued a lawsuit against Beyoncé, claiming the trailer for her visual album Lemonade copied images from a short film he had made.

Matthew Fulks says his film Palinoia had been seen by a member of Beyoncé’s team, and that a number of scenes appeared to have been recreated in the Lemonade trailer. “The number of aesthetic decisions included in Plaintiff’s Palinoia Work that are parroted in Defendants’ Lemonade Trailer demonstrates that the Lemonade Trailer is substantially similar to the Palinoia Work,” the complaint says. “The misappropriated content includes both the particular elements that the Plaintiff chose to comprise the Palinoia Work and the coordination and arrangement of those particular elements.”

Fulks, who is the creative director at the Louisville, Kentucky news station WDRB as well as being an independent film-maker, says he was approached to direct a video by MS MR, who are signed to Columbia, part of the Sony group to which Beyoncé is signed. In the process of discussions about the project, links to Palinoia were sent to various people, including Bryan Younce, who has made videos for Beyoncé and who is senior vice-president for video production at Columbia. Fulks says that in July 2015, five months before work on the Lemonade film began, Younce asked for his email and later send a note asking him to submit a storyboards and a development plant to Columbia.

Fulks also issued the lawsuit against Beyoncé’s record labels, Sony and Columbia, and film studio Parkwood Entertainment, and is seeking all profits attributed to exploitation of his work. The complaint notes the trailer’s success in promoting Lemonade, and the subsequent commercial performance of the visual album.

The complaint notes nine visual similarities, which occupy 39 seconds of the 60-second trailer, and notes the similarity in construction of the two works, with both using audio and visual montage, and the use of a narrator reciting poetry. It contains screengrabs to provide comparisons:

Similarity No 1: ‘Graffiti and persons with head down’. Photograph: Public Domain

Similarity No 2: ‘Red persons with eyes obscured’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 3: ‘Parking garage’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 4: ‘Stairwell’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 5: ‘Black and white eyes’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 6: ‘Title card screens’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 7: ‘The grass scene’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 8: ‘Feet on the street’. Photograph: Public domain

Similarity No 9: ‘Side-lit ominous figures’. Photograph: Public domain