Biopics, true crime, and the myth of “life rights.”
Biographical films, true-crime series, documentaries, and podcasts about real people account for a growing share of the audiovisual market. But one question almost inevitably arises when a producer decides to tell someone’s life story: Is it necessary to obtain the consent of the person in question or their heirs?
In the Anglo-Saxon market, the term “acquisition of life rights” is commonly used. However, this expression can be misleading if automatically applied to the Italian legal system: under Italian law, there is no right of ownership over one’s own life or the events that constitute it.
This does not mean, of course, that anyone can say anything about anyone. Rather, the production of a biopic or a true-crime work requires striking a balance between freedom of expression and a range of individual rights: the right to one’s image, name, reputation, privacy, personal identity, and data protection.
Facts of life are not protected by copyright
The first point to clarify concerns the copyright.
Copyright protects creative works and their specific form of expression, not historical facts as such. An arrest, a political career, a romantic relationship, a trial, or a sporting event do not become the exclusive property of the person who experienced them.
In principle, therefore, a producer can tell a story based on real events even without purchasing a so-called “right to the story” from the person involved.
The situation changes when the project uses a specific source: a biography, an autobiography, an article, a diary, letters, or other protected materials. The facts described may be freely recounted, but this does not mean that the specific creative interpretation contained in the source may be reproduced without authorization.
Purchasing the film rights to a biography and acquiring the “life rights” of its subject are therefore two legally distinct transactions.
The First Limitation: The Image
Just because a person can be written about does not mean that their image can be used without restriction.
Article 96 of the Copyright Act establishes the consent of the person portrayed as the general rule. Article 97, however, provides for certain important exceptions, including the person’s fame, the public office held, and the connection of the image to facts or events of public interest.
Even in these cases, a limitation remains: the image may not be used if its publication could cause harm to the person’s honor, reputation, or dignity. The Court of Cassation has also clarified that fame does not constitute general authorization for the commercial use of the image, especially when such use is intended to promote products or services.
In the context of audiovisual production, it is therefore necessary to distinguish between the cinematic narrative and the promotional use of a real person’s image: trailers, advertising campaigns, merchandising, and commercial initiatives may require further consideration beyond the character’s portrayal in the work.
Public Figures and Private Individuals
The protagonist's fame has a significant impact on the balance between narrative freedom and the protection of the individual.
Telling the story of a prime minister, a famous singer, or an international athlete does not pose the same challenges as portraying a family member, a witness, or a victim who has not voluntarily sought any public exposure.
Of course, even public figures have a right to privacy. However, the public interest in learning about certain facts may justify greater freedom of expression.
Case law continues to require a concrete balancing of interests, in which factors such as the person’s public profile, their involvement in public life, the public interest in the matter, and the time that has elapsed since the events took place are all taken into account.
This principle takes on particular importance in true crime, where people who were initially ordinary citizens may have become, against their will, the central figures in stories of enormous media significance.
The most sensitive issue: what didn't actually happen
A biopic is not a court transcript. Dialogue, encounters, and situations are often condensed, reconstructed, or invented for narrative purposes.
This is exactly where the risk increases.
It is one thing to portray a documented fact; it is quite another to attribute to a real person a statement they never made, unlawful conduct, betrayal, or an unverifiable psychological motive.
Creative freedom certainly allows for dramatization, but it does not negate the rights of the person being portrayed.
The more a work is presented to the public as a reconstruction of real events, the more important it becomes to distinguish documented facts from narrative embellishments and to prevent fiction from portraying behavior that is seriously damaging to someone’s reputation as true.
Even the opening disclaimers—“some events and dialogues have been fictionalized”—can be helpful, but they do not provide absolute protection against potential disputes.
What if the main character is dead?
A person's death does not automatically mean that their story is no longer protected.
The GDPR, as such, does not apply to the personal data of deceased individuals, but Italian lawmakers have established specific regulations. Article 2-terdecies of the Privacy Code, in fact, permits, under certain circumstances, the exercise of rights relating to the deceased’s data by individuals who have a personal interest or are acting for family reasons worthy of protection. The Data Protection Authority has recently reaffirmed that Italian law recognizes a form of continued protection even after death.
In addition, there may be rights pertaining to photographs, letters, diaries, recordings, and other materials that belonged to the subject.
For this reason, the involvement of the heirs can be very important even when there is no general obligation to obtain their “permission” to tell the story of the deceased’s life.
So why buy “life rights”?
If there is no true monopoly on one’s own life story, why do producers and streaming platforms enter into agreements to acquire life rights?
Because the value of these agreements is primarily contractual.
A life rights agreement can enable the producer to secure the protagonist's cooperation, exclusive interviews, access to private archives, photographs, letters, testimonials, and information that would not otherwise be available.
It may also include provisions regarding consent to the use of the name and likeness, exclusivity commitments, obligations to cooperate in promotional activities, and rules governing potential disputes regarding the portrayal.
In other words, the producer does not strictly speaking “buy” a person’s “life.” It buys access, cooperation, exclusivity, and greater legal certainty.
It is no coincidence that, even in the Italian market, deals described as the acquisition of “biographical rights” are commonly announced, especially for productions focused on well-known figures.
An agreement does not eliminate all risks
Even acquiring the life rights does not automatically guarantee a project's success.
For example, the contract with the lead actor does not grant rights to photographs taken by third parties, letters written by other people, music, newspaper articles, or pre-existing works that the producer wishes to incorporate into the film.
And, above all, it does not address the rights of the other people featured in the story.
An agreement with the subject of a biopic does not automatically grant the right to freely portray the subject’s spouse, children, business partner, doctor, or any other person involved in the events.
The actual clearance process must therefore cover the entire project and not just the main subject.
From “life right” to risk management
So, for a producer, the right question isn’t simply: “Do we have the life rights?”
Instead, we should ask ourselves: Which elements of the story can we document? Which materials belong to third parties? Which people can be identified? Which scenes are reconstructed? How will their names and images be used? Is there any private information that is not necessary to the story? And what risks can be mitigated through agreements, releases, or script revisions?
In the contemporary audiovisual industry, life rights do not, therefore, constitute a property right to someone’s life. They are one of the tools through which producers and financiers establish the chain of title and the risk profile of the work.
Because events may be part of history. But the way they are recounted continues to have very concrete legal consequences.