‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Poster Designs May Have Been Smuggled From A French Artist
Solo: A Star Wars Storyhas already faced some trouble behind the scenes with directorRon Howardreplacing duo Phil Lord & Chris Miller in the middle of production. While the first teaser trailer for the movie helped squash some concerns, some new woes for the Star Wars spin-off have surfaced, this time for the film’s marketing department.
French artistHachim Bahousis claiming that the designs for the character posters (released by Disney and Lucasfilmwhen the teaser trailer arrived) were lifted from artwork he created for a series of compilations albums from Sony Music. When you see the comparison between the posters and the album artwork, the similarities are unmistakable. Were the Solo poster designs stolen? Judge for yourself below.
Here’s the image that Hachim Bahous posted on Facebook with his claim about the Solo posters:
In an accompanying post (translated by Facebook from French), here’s what Bahous said about the issue:
Left the official posters of the next Star Wars (Disney), right the compiles for which I made the creation in 2015 for Sony Music France / Legacy Recordings France following the brief of the project leader Romain ‘Rpiz’ Pizon.
I am flattered that the quality of my work is recognized, but it is still pure and simple forgery, I have not been asked for my permission, I wish to be credited and paid for this work I have done for Sony!
The albums in question were released with this artwork back in the summer of 2015. They’ve since been re-released with different artwork, but it’s clear that these poster designs have been around for a few years. While using the design of images inside block text is nothing original, this specific design appears to have been copied almost exactly. Three out of the four color schemes are exactly the same, with the exception of Chewbacca poster’s more yellow color for the text. Even the fonts are quite similar.
What we don’t know is if the designer of these posters (apparentlyBLT Communications, LLCmade them) lifted the artwork style and submitted it as an original design unbeknownst to Disney, or if maybe the rights to the design were purchased from Sony by Disney and the artist simply wasn’t notified. After all, his artwork would likely be owned by Sony now, and they may not have to notify him if such designs were sold to be repurposed elsewhere.
Disney has yet to address this claim, but it might be worth getting your hands on one of these posters if they end up getting recalled by the studio due to this potential issue.
