Mission Mangal: Even Before Starting, This Akshay Kumar Starrer Gets Into A Legal Trouble

US-based filmmaker Radha Bharadwaj has filed a lawsuit in Mumbai on Wednesday, seeking to halt the production and release of Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan starrer Mission Mangal.

By
Koimoi.com Team
- November 22, 2018 | 3:53 PM IST
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Superstar Akshay Kumar, who is geared up for his next sci-fi biggie 2.0, recently announced his upcoming project, Mission Mangal. The actor also made it official that the movie to arrive on Independence Day, next year thus clashing with John Abraham’s Batla House. Now, per the latest reports flowing in, the movie has hit the roadblock.

As reported by Mid-Day, US-based filmmaker Radha Bharadwaj has filed a lawsuit in Mumbai on Wednesday, seeking to halt the production and release of Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan starrer Mission Mangal.

Bharadwaj alleged that producer Atul Kasbekar and his production house Ellipsis Entertainment shared her script based on India’s Mangalyaan mission, with Vidya Balan in 2016, who is now doing the movie based on same topic (Mission Mangal) under R Balki’s production house. Bharadwaj has claimed that it is the violation of the copyright of her screenplay, she shared with Kasbekar.

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Filmmaker Radha Bharadwaj registered the script in the US Copyright Office in 2016 and completed the shoot for the film based on it, Space MOMs. Her lawyer Shrishti Ojha stated, “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.” The lawyer further added that Bharadwaj was to work with Kasbekar and even signed a non-disclosure agreement, prohibiting the production house from disclosing her script.

Radha Bharadwaj said, “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.” She further added, “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.”

While talking to Mid-Day, Tanuj Garg, managing partner of Ellipsis Entertainment, stated, “Back in 2016, Radha and David [husband] were in touch with us on the subject. We interacted for a while to attempt producing her script, but eventually parted ways amicably as we were unable to reach a mutual understanding on the creative route forward. Ellipsis is not connected with the film that is currently under production in any way.”