Director Shankar and Lyca Productions, the producers of Indian 2, the upcoming sequel to the hit 1996 Tamil action thriller Indian, were told by the Madras High Court on Thursday to amicably resolve their issues, reported PTI .
The case was heard by a bench comprising of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy.
Earlier this month, Lyca Productions moved the Madras High Court seeking an interim injunction on Shankar from directing any other film before completing Indian 2. The court had refused to grant the injunction and said that an order can be passed only after hearing the director’s side. The move came at a time when Shankar is set to direct a Telugu film starring Ram Charan in the lead, that was announced in February.
Lyca Productions 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 has asked for a notice to be sent to Shankar and expected a response.
On Thursday, 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.
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The counsel said 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.
The next date of hearing has been scheduled for April 28.
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Indian 2 will feature actor-politician Kamal 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.
Meanwhile, Shankar was recently caught in another trouble after he announced the Hindi remake of his 2005 psychological thriller film Anniyan, starring Ranveer Singh. Producer V Ravichandran of Ascar Films, who had produced the original film, claimed that the remake was “totally illegal” as he had bought the full rights of the story and hadn’t sold it to anyone yet. Stating that Ravichandran’s allegations were false, Shankar said that the script belonged to him, which entitled him to utilise it.