A lawsuit over a Rihanna track from last year’s Smurfs movie — filed by a Grammy-nominated songwriter who claimed Paramount Pictures never paid him for writing it because it was “mad” at the superstar for budget overruns — has ended in a settlement.
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RØMANS (Sam Roman), who co-wrote Lewis Capaldi’s 2018 chart-topper “Someone You Loved,” sued the studio earlier this year, claiming Paramount had used his song “Anyone” in the movie without his authorization and without “paying him a dime.”
But in court filings Monday obtained and first reported by Billboard, attorneys for both sides told a judge they had “signed a written confidential settlement agreement” 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.
Roman, who has co-written music with Ed Sheeran, Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Maroon 5, Alicia Keys and Calvin Harris, 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 “significant backend royalties.”
But as the release of the film neared, Roman said he was told that “Anyone” would not be released commercially after all — a change that he said fundamentally altered the economics of the deal and caused negotiations to be “completely halted.” With no deal in place, he alleged Paramount “astoundingly” decided to simply release Smurfs anyway, with his uncleared music in “key scenes.”
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Roman said that in the aftermath of the movie’s release, Paramount then chose to “blame Rihanna” for the debacle. The studio allegedly told him that it was “very frustrated by the money it had supposedly spent on Rihanna’s participation” and that it felt it had “not gotten an appropriate return from her.”
“Paramount took the tack common to a toddler confronted with wrongdoing: Blame someone else. In this case, blame Rihanna,” Roman’s lawyer wrote at the time. “Paramount decided to punish plaintiff — and brazenly infringe his copyrights by using them without consent and without paying him a dime — because the studio was mad at Rihanna.”
Smurfs, 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 “Anyone,” Roman says he also wrote a second song — “Always on the Outside,” as performed by James Corden — that was also used without his permission.
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