Director Shankar and Lyca Productions, the producers of Indian 2, the upcoming sequel to the hit 1996 Tamil action thriller Indian, failed to amicably resolve their issues over the film, the Madras High Court was told on Wednesday, PTI reported.
The case was being heard by a bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy.
The film, starring actor-politician Kamal Haasan in the lead role, was embroiled in legal trouble after the production house moved the Madras High Court earlier this month. Lyca Productions sought an interim injunction on Shankar from directing any other film before completing Indian 2. The move came at a time when Shankar is set to direct a Telugu film, starring Ram Charan, which was announced in February.
Refusing to grant an injunction, the court said that an order can be passed only after hearing the director’s side. Lyca Productions also accused Shankar of not completing Indian 2, despite spending Rs 180 crore from the Rs 236 crore budget. Mentioning that 80% of the film had been finished, the production company demanded that Shankar complete shooting the rest of the film. It said that it had paid Shankar Rs 14 crore out of his agreed remuneration of Rs 40 crore. Lyca Productions said that it was willing to pay the remaining Rs 26 crore to the court.
The court had asked for a notice to be sent to Shankar and expected a response. On April 22, Shankar’s counsel said that the filmmaker will be working on the Telugu film from May 2022. He said that Shankar will work on Indian 2 and that the film will be completed in five months, starting from June. In addition, the counsel mentioned that after the death of actor-comedian Vivekh, who was part of the cast, his portions had to be reshot. Following this, the court observed that “any order from the court would not solve the issue fully” and asked the production house and Shankar to discuss and sort out the issues amicably and had adjourned the hearing to Thursday.
On Thursday, Shankar’s counsel said that that talks held with Lyca Productions on April 24, for over two hours had failed. The counsel said that though both Shankar and Haasan were ready to give “bulk dates” after June for Indian 2’s production, Lyca Productions demanded Shankar to sign a bond agreeing that he would not take up any other project in the meantime. Since Shankar did not agree to it, the production house and the director remained at loggerheads.
Besides his upcoming Telugu film with Ram Charan, Shankar recently announced that he will be directing the Hindi remake of his hit Tamil film Anniyan which will star Ranveer Singh.
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The case will be heard next on June 16.
Indian 2 will feature Haasan reprising his role as Senapathy. Other cast members include Nedumudi Venu, Kajal Aggarwal, Siddharth, Rakul Preet Singh, Bobby Simha, Priya Bhavani Shankar, and Samuthirakani. Indian 2’s music will be composed by Anirudh Ravichander. The film was announced in September 2017 during the final episode of the first season of the reality television show Bigg Boss Tamil, which was being hosted by Haasan.
