Aascar V Ravichandran has in a legal notice objected to Shankar and producer Jayantilal Gada and Pen Movies from remaking Anniyan ( dubbed as Aparichitudu in Hindi) with Ranveer Singh. southfilmy.blogspot.com had in a post 22/02/21 reported that Shankar and Ranveer Singh had wanted to remake Anniyan earlier and it had to be shelved as there was copyright issues with the producer. (https://southfilmy.blogspot.com/2021/02/before-ram-charan-indian-2-shankar-to.html). We had told you that Shankar was working on a dual role subject for Ranveer and a script was locked.
Now a tweet from Shankar yesterday that he was remaking Anniyan in Hindi set off a chain of reactions. Aascar Ravichandran in a legal notice to Shankar claimed that the story was written by Late Sujatha and he had records to show that he had paid for it. Shankar replying to the notice through a public tweet said that the film carried the credit of story- screenplay- direction of his name and Sujatha had only written the dialogues. He claimed absolute rights over the story.
Aascar Ravi taunted that when the BOYS was released and the image of the director was dented ( a story of juvenile boys coming of age had created a backlash for the overt sexual overtones), he agreed to produce Anniyan and it put him back on the rail. Shankar replied that the producer had gained substantially from the film and even now was `trying enrich in my future endeavors to which you have no co-relation’ Producer Jayantilal Gada of Pen Movies steered clear saying that the issue was between Shankar and Aascar.
Legal experts say that Shankar as director and author of the film has all rights to remake the film and with the same producer and not with anybody else . Similarly the producer cannot remake the film with out Shankar (Ref Mr. Thiagarajan Kumararaja vs. M/s Capital Film Works (India) Pvt. Ltd). Secondly, even if the producer shows proof ( an IT return of that film that shows the payment to Sujatha ) that he purchased the subject from Mr Sujatha, the payment and film credits made to director for the story- screenplay by the producer is proof , that Shankar is the author. If there is no separate contract between Aascar Ravi and Shankar , then as per Section 17 of the Copyright Act, whereby the producer of the work is the first owner of the copyright in the underlying work and not the author of the underlying work. Unless the producer and the author ( Shankar) are on the same page, a remake is not possible. If Shankar had taken the exclusive rights from Aascar Ravi to remake the film in any language, then there is nothing that the producer can do to claim any compensation. If story rights were given to Shankar, then would it have been dubbed ?. Dubbing a film is not violation of the author’s copyright as it does not change anything and only further communicates to other regions, as per a Court order.
Those who know how Sujatha works, there is no chance that the famed literary genius would allow someone else to take credit for his story idea and then agree to be only a dialogue writer for the project. Shankar is already facing a plagiarism case for story of Enthiran 2.0. (related link : https://southfilmy.blogspot.com/2021/01/why-shankar-says-enthiran-is-not-jugiba.html)
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