A film buff since childhood, Divya Shahani had always been involved in the arts. But, as a child of immigrants, going to film school was a pipe dream. She was redirected to one of three avenues: doctor, engineer, or lawyer. Opting for the latter, Shahani found a niche where her interests converged. She was one of the few in her class at Osgoode Hall to dip her toe into entertainment law, loved the experience, and jumped in with both feet — and she hasn’t looked back.
“I am the left-brain to the right-brain of creatives and artists; I knew almost right away that is where I could be the most useful” Shahani explains. “I’m lucky enough to work with lots of very interesting personalities with incredible ideas and so much ambition and fervor for creation. It means a lot to me to help them make their creative dreams come true.”
Now a Blaney McMurtry LLP partner and 2025 Lexpert Rising Star, Shahani has built a thriving practice at the intersection of law and entertainment acting for producers, talent, and new-media platforms across film, television, and short-form digital content. From AI-driven copyright and publicity rights issues to complex treaty coproductions and global content financing, Shahani brings a dual fluency in the law and entertainment to some of the most closely watched projects and legal developments in the industry.
Below, Shahani shares her insights on the past 12 months, as well as some thoughts on what’s to come in the New Year, as we call “that’s a wrap” on 2025.
Q: What aspects of your practice do you think resonated most with the legal community, and saw you bring home the Lexpert Rising Star recognition?
A: Lawyers, just like everyone else, consume a lot of content these days, whether it’s in the form of TikTok videos, influencer reels, vertical stories, or traditional film and television. Some of the movies myself and my incredible teammates Dave Stern and Corey Hock work on have attracted attention because of the A-list celebrities. I worked on Locked starring Anthony Hopkins and Bill Skarsgård. Dave worked on BlackBerry starring Jay Baruchel and Seven Veils starring Amanda Seyfried. These are just a few examples. There is a certain cool factor to what we do, so it’s not surprising that the legal community is intrigued by legal issues in media.
However, when you speak about copyright infringement, defamation, structured finance, or shareholder disputes, you’re speaking the same language as other lawyers. The day-to-day is similar to other transactional lawyers with lots of drafting, phone and Zoom calls, emails, negotiating, and navigating different personalities. But there are some things that make our practice unique, and you must speak two different languages: that of the law and that of entertainment. The application and interpretation of legal constructs without a strong understanding of the industry you’re in is like firing blanks.
Q: AI has been a dominant conversation in 2025. Where do you see AI creating the most challenges in your line of work?
A: I actually spoke about this recently at the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada or IPIC's Annual Conference. We’re seeing an increasing use of AI in the entertainment industry, but where it’s going to create complex legal issues is twofold: copyright infringement and NIL, otherwise known as name, image, and likeness.
We’re seeing various challenges around copyrighted material being used as input to train AI and may see more copyright infringement cases around that. We’ve seen class action cases, including a whole media conglomerate against OpenAI taking too many liberties inputting copyrighted material and violating terms of use to train their AI.
On the NIL or publicity rights side, there’s something called a deepfake, which is a highly realistic but fake image, video or audio of a person saying or doing something that they never actually said or did. They have been created and used often without consent and for commercial exploitation. I foresee more litigation on this topic.
It remains to be seen how the common law will develop on these issues, and whether there will be legislation that better protects creators and personality rights. But it comes down to consent, consent, consent. I don’t think we want to be in a world where somebody can create a deepfake of a person, whether famous or not, without consent and payment. In the traditional media model, when hiring a performer, you properly contract with them and have the limited rights to use their performance, and you pay them in accordance with that. The SAG and WGA strikes that shut down the industry for a while had a lot to do with governing around AI and protecting artists against its improper use. As with any form of new technology, we need guardrails.
Whether they’re union or non-union deals, we’re seeing more and more AI clauses in contracts these days, particularly with on-screen talent, that prevent or restrict a producer from using an AI likeness in sequels, prequels, remakes, or other derivative productions, without consent and payment. It’s not a good look to rip off artists, and that’s why lawyers like us exist — to negotiate these kinds of nuances.
The reality is, we’re in a world where the cost of acquisition, and therefore the cost of production, is being driven down significantly. It’s natural for filmmakers to try and find efficiencies, but it’s about finding the right balance between the economics and fair and just treatment of artists.
Q: The entertainment industry is increasingly global. How have Canadian content rules and treaty co-productions evolved, and what new opportunities or complications are emerging?
A: As an entertainment lawyer for the last 12 years, I’ve worked across Canadian productions, treaty coproductions, and service productions. I’m going to stand on my soapbox for a bit: the treaty coproduction and CanCon systems are very restrictive towards the involvement of Americans and in a world of globalized content, I don’t think it’s beneficial to set up barriers to content production.
A treaty coproduction is one where two or more producers from countries that have an official audiovisual co-production treaty work together to develop, finance and produce a production to benefit from higher incentives in each country that are only available to national productions. Basically, more financing, more partnership, more collaboration, and bigger audiences across those coproducing countries. A lot of movies get made this way.
Canada can participate in official treaty co-productions, the US cannot. For example, I once worked on an official treaty coproduction that fell apart where one of the key creatives was American and they wanted to have a greater involvement than was permitted.
The same is true for CanCon, which means a Canadian national production. As soon as you have an American leading the show, for example as a capitalP Producer or the writer and director, or someone who wants to be on set more than 25% of principal photography, that suggests significant involvement by the American, which disqualifies it as Canadian content.
I get the irony of my soapbox here when their president is trying to restrict productions from going abroad. But the fact is we’re seeing more collaboration between Americans and Canadians in entertainment, not less. Canadians want to do more with the US – after all, it’s the home of Hollywood — and we love American service productions coming to Canada because it increases jobs and the quality of our talent pool. Long story longer, the regulatory system we have in place right now is outdated in my opinion.
Q: How has the competitive landscape for content acquisition changed over the past year?
A: Over the years we’ve seen fewer and fewer domestic buyers, and those that remain are paying less upfront. It’s getting more competitive to sell a production, especially ahead of going into principal photography, which is a different process than what it used to be.
For example, in the old days, there were more minimum guarantees or distribution advances paid by buyers. So, they had skin in the game before the production went to camera and the filmmaker could take that paper and borrow against it to cash flow their production. Now, buyers are pickier. They want to wait to see the completed production before they decide whether they want to buy it, as opposed to the other way around.
That means filmmakers are having a harder time getting their films financed, or they have to seek other forms of financing. Tax incentives of course play an important role, but they still need to be qualified for and cash flowed in order to complete the production.
Q: Were there any other big shifts in entertainment? Anything that surprised you?
A: We keep hearing over and over again, “theatrical is dead, movies are dead, everything’s about vertical shorts and TikTok and Instagram reels.” But we’re still seeing a lot of movies get made.
Every time there’s a new form of technology, there’s a tendency to declare that every prior form is dead. But that’s just not accurate, and it’s never been accurate. Film didn’t kill visual art, television didn’t kill radio, and now I don’t think AI or shortform content is necessarily killing long-form film and television. In fact, we’re seeing some of the best, highestquality television we’ve ever seen — Succession (every lawyer’s favourite), Euphoria, Severance, the latest one I just started watching, Pluribus.
On the film side, we’re seeing big comebacks by some our favourite auteur filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson with One Battle After Another, Darren Aronofsky with Caught Stealing, Jim Jarmusch with Father Mother Sister Brother, Gus Van Sant with Dead Man’s Wire (shameless, plug, as I was involved on that), and next year Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. I also love that we’re seeing more international filmmakers on the global stage, for example, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat; The Substance became such a global phenomenon. I was really into her movies even before she became a global success.
The appetite for watching movies in the theatre has undeniably changed. But just look at how many streamer subscriptions people have these days. Most people I know have at least three. I also find it interesting that no matter how famous a social media personality gets, many still want to star in a movie or television series—it’s still the pinnacle.
As we approach awards season, we are reminded that there’s still a huge global community of cineastes. Platforms like MUBI, which I absolutely love (I encourage everyone to get a subscription or give one as a present this holiday season), have become tastemakers in independent film. They have done a great job of bringing us together and making us feel seen.
Q: What else is on your radar for 2026?
I am interested to see how technology really continues to change the space and maximize efficiencies. I am also excited to see more productions that speak to a global audience. It’s not just about the economics, there is also a creative reason to involving global partners. You inherently have more than one audience when you have multiple countries engaged. People hear about the movie in the press, they know it’s being shot locally, perhaps there are celebrity sightings in their city; all of this builds a sort of nationalistic fervour when a movie comes to town, and they immediately want to watch it when it comes out. I love seeing more of that.
One of my favourite movies in the last few years is Dev Patel’s box office success, Monkey Man. Because Dev is who he is, and because it was his directorial debut, I think it attracted various cultural diasporas. As an Indo-Canadian, I absolutely loved that an action-packed Hollywood movie was made rooted in Indian culture, mythology and yes even with Bollywood sensibilities. And the movie I mentioned earlier, Locked directed by Dave Yarovesky, is a gripping Hollywood remake of a famous Argentinian film, 4x4, by renowned Argentinian filmmaker duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. It’s an incredible claustrophobic psychological thriller, very Hannibal Lecter meets Phone Booth. So, on the topic of remakes, I would like to continue to see thoughtful and unique derivatives and franchises. And I don’t mean “derivatives” and “franchises” as commonly understood in law.
Q: How does the Entertainment Group at Blaney McMurtry LLP continue to meet the industry’s challenges, both emerging and enduring?
A: We stay nimble and evolve with the landscape, because what defines entertainment is constantly shifting and expanding. At Blaney McMurtry LLP, our entertainment group is very well positioned for these changes. We represent the right balance of traditional and new media clients already and will continue to do so.
Together with my teammates Dave and Corey, we do a ton of traditional production counsel work for film and television, but we also rep influencers and shortform content creators
We also represent some promising new media companies. For example, Wattpad is a very wellknown social storytelling platform where millions of users read and write original fiction and fan fiction and connect through comments and likes. There’s a lot of crosscollaboration. It’s the home of many popular stories that have been adapted into traditional film and television, like After, The Kissing Booth, and most recently Chasing Red, a great YA romance that I really enjoyed and that definitely crosses borders.
Chasing Red is being packaged and made, starring the famous Riverdale redhead Madelaine Petsch, and it’s being directed by my friend Mackenzie Munro, who’s Canadian. She directed Wattpad’s first independently financed romcom, based on a popular story called Boot Camp from the platform, which was nominated for several Canadian Screen Awards. Wattpad is just fantastic in terms of creating a community of storytellers.
Similarly, we also rep Webtoon, which is a global storytelling platform that hosts webtoons, or digital comics designed to scroll on smartphones. That too enables a community of creators and users to discover, create and share stories, and democratizes the contentcreation process.
Q: Any final thoughts as we wrap up this look back at 2025?
A: I always say I’m content agnostic as an entertainment lawyer — but as a fan, I do love that horror is such a hot genre right now and I’m in for the ride, I can’t look away!
I’m grateful that I have made myself useful on all sorts of interesting projects in 2025. While there tends to be a pattern in the work we do, what I love is how many different and interesting people and ideas we are exposed to. That’s what I’ve always loved about what I do, and what continues to drive me as we move into 2026 and beyond.
This article is in collaboration with Blaney McMurtry LLP
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Divya Shahani is a partner in Blaney McMurtry LLP’s entertainment, media and sports law group, practicing entertainment, corporate/commercial, financial services and intellectual property law. She represents film, television and commercial producers, lenders and private financiers, distributors, media and technology startups, influencers and content creators, talent, athletes, agencies, hospitality groups and live entertainment companies.
An entertainment lawyer since 2014 and an executive producer on various productions, Divya brings industry knowledge, business strategy and pragmatism to her advice. Before joining Blaney McMurtry LLP, she practiced at a fullservice Bay Street firm and a prominent entertainment boutique. She practices in English and French, is particularly passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the entertainment industry, and outside of work can be found learning Spanish and Italian, watching movies or playing tennis.