Lawsuit filed against Akshay Kumar’s Mission Mangal
It was earlier in first week of November when, Akshay Kumar in a tweet informed about the shoot of upcoming film Mission Mangal.
Proud and excited to bring the story of India’s Mars Mission, #MissionMangal to you. Coincidentally the mission was launched on this very date, 5th Nov. 2013. Meet the team and do share your best wishes for our shubh mangal journey. Shoot begins soon 🙏🏻 @foxstarhindi pic.twitter.com/SYfSmoZEdb
— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) November 5, 2018
But according to the latest development, lawsuit has been filed against against Akshay Kumar-Vidya Balan starrer Mission Mangal, by a US-based filmmaker Radha Bhardwaj.
According to a media report, the lawsuit filed by Bhardwaj seeks the halt of the production and release of the film.
Film maker, Radha Bharadwaj claims that the film borrows from her script, the screenplay of which she had shared with one of the producers of the film Atul Kasbekar. She also states that Atul shared the screenplay with Vidya Balan without her approval.
Radha had registered her script with the US Copyright Office in 2016 for the US and Indian market back in 2016. And now that her own film Space MOMs is complete, she claims that the makers of Mission Mangal have rushed into production to sabotage her film.
In a statement Radha’s lawyer Srishti Ojha told, “There are hundreds of ways to tell the story of Mangalyaan, but Radha came up with the angle of focusing on the women engineers working on the mission”.
Radha further claims that she was supposed to work with Atul’s production house to find financing for her film. And also that they had signed an agreement where they can’t disclose the script to anyone without her consent.
But, later Atul’s team admitted, that they ‘Ellipsis Entertainment’, had shown the script to Vidya Balan and had violated her contract.
“I’ll bet the details of the origin of this project were not known to Akshay Kumar, Fox Star or its US partners. But now that they know it, I ask them to act honourably. I have documentation going back to 2014 on my efforts to bring this story to screen”, Radha told the publication talking about Akshay Kumar’s involvement in the project.
Adding further she said, “That they are scrambling to catch up with me seems to be an acknowledgement that their project is the same as mine. They seem to think that rushing their film into production will discourage any distributor from releasing my film”.
