In a strange twist of events, the Madras High Court has questioned producer Firoz Nadiadwala on whether his film, Hera Pheri 3 is being made at all, because a production house - Seven Arts International- has claimed that they, and not Nadiadwala, own the copyright to the Hera Pheri franchise.
As reported by Bar and Bench on Thursday, Seven Arts International Limited has filed a petition stating that Nadiadwala was authorised to make only one Hindi remake of the Malayalam original Ramji Rao Speaking (1989), which was released as the Priyadarshan-directed Hera Pheri in 2000. However, Nadiadwala went on to produce a sequel, Phir Hera Pheri (2006), and has now sold the rights for the third part to actor Akshay Kumar’s production house.
GP Vijayakumar, MD of Seven Arts International tells HTCity exclusively, “I bought the entire rights for the Hera Pheri franchise from the original producers of Ramji Rao Speaking, Adithya Films in 2022. They informed me that Firoz Nadiadwala had been given the right to make one Hindi version of the film. But he made a second version which released in 2006. He is not authorised to make a sequel or prequel, or use the characters.”
When asked why action was not taken after Phir Hera Pheri, Vijayakumar reasoned, “While the first film was directed by Priyadarshan who we are close to, the second film was directed by Neeraj Vora, and the copyright holders at the time didn’t realise what happened. The original producers and I realised much later that Nadiadwala has done a violation and cheating. At the time we thought jo ho gaya, ho gaya. We will produce the next version in Hindi. We approached actor Akshay Kumar for the same and that’s when we got to know that Nadiadwala has sold the rights to Akshay’s production house Cape of Good Films. We sent Nadiadwala a legal notice on how he could sell something he did not own. I had no option but to move the Court.”
{{/usCountry}}When asked why action was not taken after Phir Hera Pheri, Vijayakumar reasoned, “While the first film was directed by Priyadarshan who we are close to, the second film was directed by Neeraj Vora, and the copyright holders at the time didn’t realise what happened. The original producers and I realised much later that Nadiadwala has done a violation and cheating. At the time we thought jo ho gaya, ho gaya. We will produce the next version in Hindi. We approached actor Akshay Kumar for the same and that’s when we got to know that Nadiadwala has sold the rights to Akshay’s production house Cape of Good Films. We sent Nadiadwala a legal notice on how he could sell something he did not own. I had no option but to move the Court.”
{{/usCountry}}We reached out to Akshay’s production house and the spokesperson said that they bought the rights from Nadiadwala under the impression that he owns them.
Efforts to reach Nadiadwala met with no response while Priyadarshan who is supposed to direct Hera Pheri 3 told HT City, “No idea”.