Two days ago Times of India reported that Hrithik Roshan’s upcoming film produced by Rakesh Roshan and Sanjay Gupta under the banner FilmKRAFT Production had landed in a legal tussle with the model-actor Sudhanshu Pandey.
Sudhanshu Pandey claims that the story, screenplay and dialogue of the film are copied from his script titled ‘Farmayish’. Informing the Mirror about the same, Sudhanshu Pandey said “I spent two-and-a-half years nurturing this script. It’s my story and was to be the debut production, made under my banner Raw Stock Production Private Limited. I met Sanjay Gupta in May and he agreed to come on board as director and co-producer of the film. Together, we met Balaji Telefilms and pitched the story to them, they instantly agreed to join us as co-producers. We had Hrithik in mind for the lead and after one script-reading session with Sanjay, the actor gave his nod and informed that he wanted his father to hear the script. When Rakesh Roshan heard the script, he made it clear that the film would be presented and produced under his banner FilmKRAFT Productions,”
Pandey claims that he had met Rakesh Roshan and Sanjay Gupta on October 11th , 2015 and had offered him 2% profits from the film along with an offer to get involved in the film as an associate producer. However, Sudhanshu Pandey claims to have rejected this offer and claims that the producers had carried on with production of the film using his script, screen play and dialogue.
Following this Sudhanshu Pandey issued the following public notice dated November 28th , 2015 which claims that all rights, titles and interests including all copyrights in script titled ‘Farmayish’ is owned exclusively by Raw Stock Films Pvt Ltd, an entity associated with Sudhanshu.
Interestingly it is reported that FilmKRAFT Productions had also issued similar public notices through four different trade magazines on December 4th, 2015 stating that a writer named Vijay Kumar Mishra owns all rights in the script of Farmayish.
It was later learnt that Sudhanshu had issued two separate legal notices to Rakesh Roshan and Sanjay Gupta claiming copyright infringement of the script Farmayish and had filed a complaint with the Indian Film and Television Producers Council.
Authored by Nithin V. Kumar.
Contributed with the support of the Entertainment Law division of BananaIP Counsels.
For queries on Entertainment Law in India, please write to contact@bananaip.com. Our experts will revert to you at the earliest.
Source- here
