Madras HC notice to makers of Jayalalithaa biopics over Deepa’s plea

The Madras High Court on Thursday (February 13) issued notice to the producers of a web series ‘Queen’ and movie ‘Thalaivi’, based on the life of late J. Jayalalithaa, on a plea by her niece J. Deepa challenging a single judge order, which allowed its release.

A division bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Krishnan Ramasamy, before which the appeal came up, ordered the notice returnable by two weeks to A.L. Vijay and Vishnu Vardhan Induri, producers of the movie ‘Thalaivi’, and Gowtham Vasudev Menon,
producer of the web series ‘Queen’.

The single judge Justice Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy on December 11 had declined to grant any stay on the release of the web serial and the film. Hence, the serial was released.

Now after viewing the web serial, Deepa filed the present appeal in the High Court.

In her appeal, Deepa submitted that she had the opportunity to watch the web serial and said she was ‘shocked’ to know that Menon had included several scenes to portray her
aunt late Jayalalithaa in a bad light.

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She further contended that in the name of alleged fiction, Menon had copied in verbatim the entire private life events of her aunt and filed the similarities present in the web serial as that of the private life events of her aunt.

She said she had filed the documents which are relevant and necessary to decide the issues and substantiate contentions and submissions of her.

Earlier, Deepa, in her original application in the civil suit, had said the three producers do not have any legal right, to make, release, publish, exhibit publicly or privately, sell, enter into film festival, promote, advertise or produce in any format or medium wholly or partially the film or any tele-serial or web serial without her consent.

(With inputs from agencies)