Fanfiction Flicks: Dissecting the Expected Legal Ramifications of Harry Styles Homages on the Big Screen

When the trailer for the highly anticipated Amazon Prime film The Idea of You debuted on YouTube in March 2024, viewers were captivated by the striking resemblance between the main character, Hayes Campbell, portrayed by Nicholas Galitzine, and the renowned former British One Direction member, Harry Styles.¹ The film is based on the novel The Idea of You by author Robinne Lee.² In a 2017 interview, Lee admitted to beginning the novel after seeing a YouTube video of the boy band One Direction and stated that she was specifically inspired by the personal life of Harry Styles.³

While Galitzine and Styles do not share similar facial features, Galitzine’s character, Hayes Campbell, seems to imitate some qualities that Styles is known for.⁴ In one scene, Campbell, a British boyband member, performs onstage, showing off his many arm tattoos as he dons a black sleeveless shirt. Cutoff shirts were a signature get-up for Styles during his One Direction days.⁵ The novel is based on the relationship between Campbell and a much older woman, a dynamic that Lee derived from Harry Styles’ love life.⁶ The stage and lighting in this scene also seem to imitate the appearance of One Direction’s stage design featured in their 2013 documentary, This is Us. As viewers discussed the unmistakable similarities, a lingering question arose: is it legally permissible to so blatantly model a movie character after a celebrity?

Is The Idea of You Fan Fiction?

The concept of bringing fanfiction to the big screen is not novel. In 2013, author and One Direction fan Anna Todd posted a Harry Styles fan fiction titled After to Wattpad, a popular online writing platform.⁷ After was a romance fan fiction based on the life of a regular college student, Tessa, and her relationship with Harry Styles of the famous boyband One Direction.⁸ The story garnered over a billion reads on Wattpad, and within the next year, Todd earned a “six-figure, multi-book deal” with Gallery Books and published subsequent sequels.⁹ Paramount Pictures was given the screen rights to the book and released the film adaptation of After in theaters in 2019.¹⁰ Harry’s name was changed to Hardin Scott to avoid legal consequences when the novel became commercialized.¹¹

It was no secret that the books and film were based on Harry Styles, and at least one former One Direction member has acknowledged the film’s blatant inspiration.¹² When former One Direction member Liam Payne went to watch an After sequel with his fiance, he quickly realized that the film was based on himself and his bandmates.¹³ In an Instagram livestream, he stated, “I got out the cinema and realized that the film was based on characters that were all from One Direction . . . I feel like sometimes I’m more [like] the main guy, Hardin, who was obviously based on Harry Styles . . . I know [Todd] wrote [the books] while we were in the band together. It’s so cool that being in that band has created so many great things.”¹⁴ However, Lee’s book The Idea of You did not begin as fan fiction, nor is the name of her main character “Harry Styles.”

Lee herself has said that she would not classify the book as fan fiction, stating in an interview with Vogue that the book “was never meant to be about Harry Styles” and that she intended for the focus of the book to be “a story about a woman approaching 40 and reclaiming her sexuality… at the point that society traditionally writes them off.”¹⁵ This distinction between After and The Idea of You presents a challenge in constructing a legal argument suggesting any potential legal repercussions for Lee or Amazon Studios regarding the striking resemblance between Harry and Hayes, especially given that After, which formerly named Harry as the main character, was a commercial success. While ethical concerns surround the legality of creative projects like After and The Idea of You, there are various legal reasons why these creative endeavors should enjoy legal protection.

The Right of Publicity and The Right to Privacy

Fans often express significant concern regarding the privacy rights and depictions of a celebrity who served as inspiration for a novel or movie.¹⁶ Many states have enacted statutes or case law that recognize an intellectual property right known as the “right of publicity”.¹⁷ The right of publicity is a term of art that refers to the “misappropriation of a person’s name, likeness, or other indicia of personal identity—such as nickname, pseudonym, voice, signature, likeness, or photograph—for commercial benefit.”¹⁸ While there is no federal law that recognizes the right of publicity, more than thirty-five states recognize the right under common and statutory law.¹⁹ The right of publicity is often in tension with the First Amendment right to free speech.²⁰ In the 1979 case Guglielmi v. Spelling-Goldberg Productions, the Supreme Court of California suggested that to establish a cause of action for a right of publicity violation, a plaintiff must show that “the proprietary interests at issue clearly outweigh the value of free expression.”²¹ In Comedy III Productions, Inc. v. Gary Saderup, Inc. the Supreme Court of California recognized that “because celebrities take on personal meanings to many individuals in society, the creative appropriation of celebrity images can be an important avenue of individual expression.”²² Therefore, when examining the motion pictures based on novels inspired by celebrities, it is difficult to conceive of how purely fictional events can qualify as misappropriations of a celebrity’s personal identity.

At its core, fan fiction is “aggressively fictional.”²³ Stacey M. Lantagne, a legal scholar, writes: “If you’re writing a story about Harry Styles from One Direction going to college, other than his name, what he looks like, and maybe a few quotes from interviews he’s given, you haven’t taken anything from him. None of the stuff you’ve taken is private.”²⁴ In Dora v. Frontline Video, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Second District of California similarly stated:

 “Though both celebrities . . . have the right to be free from the unauthorized exploitation of their names and likenesses, every publication of someone’s name or likeness does not give rise to an appropriation action. Publication of matters in the public interest, which rests on the right of the public to know and the freedom of the press to tell it, is not ordinarily actionable.”²⁵

When examining The Idea of You and After, neither the novels nor the films identify themselves as a depiction of true statements about Harry Styles, the inspiration for such projects.²⁶ The entire basis for fan fiction and subsequent film adaptations is that they allow audiences to engage in a fantasy about a celebrity they care about.²⁷ It is reasonable to believe that readers or theater audiences will know that Harry Styles is not the same as a fictional rendition of Harry Styles in a book or movie.²⁸ Such depictions do not exploit or appropriate Styles’ likeness, but instead are creative reworkings of Harry’s name, physical characteristics, basic background facts, and random personality traits. Biographical information does not usually qualify as a violation of the right of publicity.²⁹ Harry Styles does not own being in a boy band, wearing cutoff-sleeve shirts, or dating older women. While these traits make Harry Styles intriguing and interesting in the public eye, they are not unique to him. Reworking such details in a text or movie is not against the law.³⁰

When fans or casual observers draw inspiration from someone’s persona and commercialize this reinterpretation, they do not inherently infringe upon any privacy or publicity rights held by the individual who served as their inspiration. While fans may harbor a protective sentiment towards their favorite celebrity when they are depicted unrealistically and inaccurately by a director or author, this absence of realism ensures an author or director’s legal right to do so.

Aydan Urias is a second-year law student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a Staff Editor at the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal. Aydan is interested in intellectual property law and hopes to practice within the film and music industry.