Aretha Franklin has lodged an amended complaint against Amazing Grace producer Allan Elliot.
The singer wants Elliot “to stop the unauthorized release and showing for commercial purposes” of his Amazing Grace documentary. The film features footage from Aretha Franklin’s 1972 gospel concert at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church.
The new complaint alleges Elliott held a screening for buyers in Toronto despite the film’s removal from the official festival programme. The complaint states the alleged screening “violates Ms. Franklin’s contractual and statutory rights, her rights to use and control her name and likeness, and represents an invasion of her privacy.”
Franklin first filed the lawsuit ahead of the documentary’s scheduled premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. The singer was controversially granted a temporary injunction to block the screening and Amazing Grace was subsequently removed from from the lineups of both the Chicago and Toronto Film Festivals.
The new complaint also pleads a declaratory judgment for “the right to control the use of her name and likeness” and asks that “the footage of her 1972 gospel concert may not be used by Mr. Elliott without her explicit authorization.”
Franklin is also now seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction that would block Elliott “his agents, employees and all those working in concert with him, from publicly releasing or using for commercial purposes of the film” any of Franklin’s gospel concert footage. [via The Hollywood Reporter]