They're in the bright light again!
The producers of the reigning Best Play Tony winner Stereophonic have settled the plagiarism case brought against playwright David Adjmi by Fleetwood Mac music producer Ken Caillat.
Caillat had accused the play of lifting scenes from his memoir, Making Rumours, which detailed his experiences working on the seminal Fleetwood Mac album Rumours. Caillat and book co-author Steven Stiefel sued for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and to block the "copying, publication, release, broadcast, performance, and other exploitation of Stereophonic."
Per the settlement, both parties (Callait & Stiefel, and Stereophonic et al) have indicated that their dispute has been resolved “in principle," with a finalized settlement expected to be released before the end of the month.
In law, an "agreement in principle" is a stepping stone for a contract. Intended to predate a fair and equitable contract, an agreement in principle may, for example, outline a schedule of royalties or credit. Terms of this specific settlement have not been released to the public. For those wishing to read the whole of the lawsuits paper trail, the case number is No. 24-cv-07417-CM.
In the original lawsuit, Caillat and Stiefel stated that the play infringed their copyright and "copied the heart and soul" of their book. Both the book and Stereophonic follow a young sound engineer recording an album with a five-member rock band in California between 1976 and 1977, where three members are British, two members are American, and four members are coupled up with each other. Adjmi had previously denied that Stereophonic was a Fleetwood Mac bio-play, telling Playbill: "There's aspects of Fleetwood Mac, there's aspects of Bruce Springsteen, there's aspects of Keith Richards. There's so many archetypal elements in this play that I think it's reductive to just say this is the Fleetwood Mac bio-play.”
This was not Adjmi's first time in court defending his work. In 2015, a U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Adjmi, who had been locked for three years in a legal battle with DLT Entertainment over his Off-Broadway play 3C. DLT claimed Adjmi's dark comedy infringed on their copyright by taking too liberal a page from their 1970s sitcom Three's Company. The decision in Adjmi's favor expanded what kind of parody constituted "fair use" of copyrighted material in theatre.
Spokespersons for Stereophonic have not responded to a request for comment on this lawsuit. The Tony-winning play is scheduled to run on Broadway through January 12, 2025. The play features original music by Will Butler, formerly of the band Arcade Fire. The show made history at the Tony Awards as the play with the most Tony nominations ever, and the show eventually won five Tony Awards: Best Play, Direction of a Play (Daniel Aukin), Featured Actor (Will Brill), Sound Design (Ryan Rumery), and Scenic Design (David Zinn).
