HC reserves order on plea against Jayalalithaa biopic

CHENNAI: The Madras high court on Wednesday reserved its order on a plea by former chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s niece seeking to restrain some filmmakers from going ahead with the bilingual biopic of the late leader.

Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar has s ought to restrain them from going ahead with their project without her consent. The matter pertains to the announcement made by filmmakers A L Vijay, Vishnu Vardhan Induri and Gowtham Vasudev Menon to produce a film on the biography of late Jayalalitha titled ‘THALAIVI’ in Tamil and ‘JAYA’ in Hindi besides web series, ‘Queen’.

While ‘Thalaivi’ and ‘Jaya’, directed by AL Vijay, is in the works, the web series is directed by Gautham Menon.the film will have Kangana Ranaut in the lead and the web series stars Ramya Krishnan. Deepa has contended that the filmmakers did not have any legal right to produce the movie on the life and times of Jayalalithaa. In her application, Deepa further claimed the three do not have any legal right, power or authority to make to publish, exhibit publicly or privately film or any tele or web serial in respect of Jayalalithaa’s life or that of any direct descendants without her consent.

Counsel for Vishnu Vardhan Induri submitted that the producer decided to produce the film based on the book ‘Thalaivi.’ Deepa has not objected to the publication of numerous books written on Jayalalitha including ‘Thalaivi’ and the book was also registered under the Copyright Act. He submitted that ~25 crore had been spent on the series.