CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on an appeal from Santhi Thiagarajan, the mother of actor Prasanth of Staar Movies, to stall the release of feature film ‘Thaana Serndha Koottam’ starring Suriya. The film is scheduled for January 12 release.
The First Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddose reserved the orders to be delivered on Wednesday.
Originally, Santhi filed a suit seeking the court to restrain the makers of the movie from releasing the film without settling the dispute over its remake rights, which according to her belonged to her.
According to Santhi, Hindi movie ‘Special 26’ starring Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar was released in 2013. Staar Movies signed an agreement in August 2014, valid for three years, with the makers of the movie Viacom 18, who also owned the copyright of the film, and obtained the rights to remake the movie in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. It assigned the right to remake the film in Tamil to RPP Film Factory for a consideration of Rs 1.5 crore. But the RPP failed to produce the remake within the stipulated period of one year.
Subsequently, Staar Movies came to know that Studio Green was making the Tamil version of the movie with Suriya in the lead role. Alleging that the remake is being made without her consent, Staar Movies had approached the High Court.
Noting that the plaintiff had approached the court at the eleventh hour, a single judge dismissed the application seeking the interim relief. Hence, the present appeal, assailing the single judge’s dismissal order.