Actor Dhanush’s Wunderbar Films Private Limited on Monday decided to pursue its main civil suit seeking damages of ₹1 crore, as well as a permanent injunction, instead of pressing upon its plea for an interim injunction restraining the use of behind-the-scenes (BTS) visuals of Tamil movie Naanum Rowdy Dhaan in Netflix docu-drama Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairytale.
Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy closed the interim injunction application, without any prejudice and leaving all issues open, after senior counsel P.S. Raman, assisted by Gautam S. Raman, agreed to proceed with the main suit for damages. Since the docu-drama was released on November 18, 2024 itself, it was felt that an interim injunction at this point may not be of much use.
The judge decided to take up the main suit for hearing on April 9. The The dispute between Mr. Dhanush and Nayanthara Kurian had become public on November 16, 2024 when the latter addressed an open letter to Mr. Dhanush and posted it on her X handle. She had claimed that Wunderbar did not give permission to use the BTS visuals even after two years of repeated requests.
She also accused Mr. Dhanush of harbouring personal grudge against her and her husband Vignesh Sivan, who had directed the movie Naanum Rowdy Dhaan for Wunderbar, and said, just three seconds of the BTS visuals shot using personal devices had been used in the docu-drama. On the other hand, Wunderbar, in its plaint, accused Ms. Nayanthara and Mr. Sivan of unprofessional behaviour during the shoot of the movie.
“The fourth respondent (Mr. Sivan) unnecessarily began focusing his attention only on the third respondent (Ms. Nayanthara) ignoring the other cast and crew of the movie by taking multiple re-takes of scenes which involved the third respondent in order to make sure that only she gives her best performance and not prioritising the other actors,” the affidavit of Wunderbar read.
The production firm also said: “In view of clause 4 of the artist agreement, the film producer owns the copyright over all the artists’ performance in connection with the cinematograph film meaning thereby that if any picture or video of the artist is captured as long as they are in their character on the set of the cinematograph film, the copyright over the same vests only with the producer.”
Published – March 10, 2025 07:21 pm IST
Tamil cinema
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celebrity
