Trouble for Nana Patekar’s ‘Tadka’ continues; Prakash Raj summoned by Bombay High Court

Prakash Raj has been summoned by the Bombay High Court regarding a suit related to his movie ‘Tadka’ over the issue of Intellectual Property Rights between his brother-in-law's company and Zee Studios. According to reports, the court on Monday asked the veteran actor-director to be present in the court over the dispute.   

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Essel Vision Productions Limited, the company which owns Zee Studios, moved the High Court on January 25 to implement the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the firm and Sameer Dixit and Prakash Raj’s brother-in-law Jatish Verma, partners of the production house Movie Makers. According to the terms in the agreement, Zee Studios paid Rs 4.25 crore plus taxes to the duo for the costs towards making the film.  

Zee Studios claimed that there were not shown any agreement to show that Prakash Raj, Dixit and Verma are partners. The production house claimed that though there were not officially partners, the trio was shown as ‘one team’ and considering the relation between Raj and his brother-in-law Verma, the actor-filmmaker was also credited as a producer on the film.     

The production house now claims that Prakash Raj "purposely did not execute the MoU’ "in collusion and connivance with" Verma and Dixit to ‘calculatedly defeat’ the rights of Zee Studios. 

Zee Studios claim that according to the terms of the MoU, they had agreed upon a 60:40 share in their favour regarding Intellectual Property Rights while the ‘exploitation rights’ were "solely and completely vested" with them. 

The company claims that despite the aforementioned terms, Prakash Raj already sold some rights related to the film to financing company Akshay Communications Pvt Ltd, which is in possession of the rights of the negatives. Zee Studios also stated that Dixit and Verma had also sold some of the rights to raise funds from the company Swiss Entertainment Pvt Ltd. 

Zee Studios requested the court to pass an order in their favour so that all rights related to the movie are handed to them.  However, the lawyer representing Akshay Communications Pvt Ltd objected as they claimed to have paid Rs 4.5 crore to Prakash Raj. Following the arguments, the court asked Raj to be present in the court this week. The judge also added that the movie cannot be released without the court’s permission.

Tadka’, is the remake of the Malayalam movie ‘Salt N' Pepper’, directed by Prakash Raj. The movie reportedly stars Nana Patekar, Taapsee Pannu, Shriya Saran, Ali Fazal, among others.  

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The film has been facing trouble for a long time, facing multiple delays. It was earlier scheduled to release in 2017 but will now hit the theatres this year.