Netflix's Ayrton Senna F1 series facing copyright lawsuit from independent filmmaker

Netflix had released a miniseries on three-time F1 champion Ayrton Senna's life in late 2024, named Senna. However, less than a year since its release, the docuseries has found itself at the center of a lawsuit by an independent filmmaker, Lauren Wild, who has dragged Netflix along with other defendants to the court for the matter.

Wild filed the lawsuit in California's federal court, revolving around the miniseries. He revealed that he had been working on a feature film project focusing on Senna's life since 2013.

To make this project a reality, he met with then-Sony Pictures executive T. Paul Miller. But, a few years later, when Miller had moved to Warner Bros, he introduced Wild to the production company Gullane, who had been working on a similar idea.

He subsequently made revisions to Senna's biographic portrayal, and Warner Bros sent this work to a producer at Gullane, Gabriel Lacerda. During this time, Wild wrote 11 episodes for the show titled, "Built for Speed: Senna."

For this, Wild was proposed a showrunner job and a co-writer role for Senna. However, he alleges that all lines of communication were broken apart by 2019, as he was told that the production company was looking to produce a different show.

But when Senna was released globally last year, Wild noticed that a myriad of details about the plot were eerily similar. This led him to file a case as he sues a host of parties for copyright infringement and asserts that Netflix paid "little to no due diligence before greenlighting" the show.

Thus, the case is now being handled by a federal court in California, all while Gullane and Netflix have refrained from making any comments about the matter so far.

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This is not the first time that the F1 realm has faced a copyright lawsuit

F1 logo - Source: Getty

Lawsuits are prevalent in the world of huge corporations. Moreover, with F1 witnessing a huge boom in popularity in the past few years, a few cases have also sprung up on the sidelines.

Recently, McLaren has been involved in a lawsuit with Alex Palou for not adhering to his contract with the team and remaining with Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar. This issue is currently going on in the courtroom and seems far from a conclusion anytime soon.

Meanwhile, F1 has also been at the center of such lawsuits. After Liberty Media took over the sport's commercial rights, it changed the sport's logo, which had been in place for over two decades, to the present one.

But, this invited a lawsuit in the form of 3M claiming F1's new logo was too similar to its Futuro product range's logo. This lawsuit is regarded as having been settled out of the courtroom.