Madras HC declines actor's plea to stall producer's upcoming movie releases

The Madras High Court on Monday refused to restrain film producer K E Gnanavelraja of Studio Green Films from releasing three of his films, before settling the pending 'fees' that are allegedly due to actor D Sivakarthikeyan.

Justice M Sundar, who took up the plea, appointed an arbitrator to settle the issue and directed Sivakarthikeyan to approach the authority.

According to the actor, Gnanavelraja did not pay the remuneration of Rs 15 crore in full for having acted in 'Mr Local', a Tamil feature film produced by him in 2018-19, and also did not remit the Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) to the Income Tax department.

His prayer to the court urging it to restrain the producer from making any further investments in the latter's ongoing projects titled 'Rebel', 'Chiyan 61' and 'Pathu Thala' and also to prevent him from transferring any rights with respect to the three movies either to film distributors for theatrical release or to Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms, was not granted.