Superstar Akshay Kumar had recently announced his next Independence Day release, ‘Mission Mangal’ that is being touted as India’s first space film. The project is based on the Mars Mission and is being jointly produced with Fox Star Studios and Cape of Good Films.
Akshay had earlier announced on his Twitter handle, a few days ago, “A powerful true story of ordinary people with extraordinary dreams, on an unheard of mission to achieve the impossible. #MissionMangal will come alive on 15th August, 2019. See you at the theaters.”
The film has landed into legal trouble. According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, a US-based filmmaker Radha Bharadwaj has filed a lawsuit to halt production of the film as she feels that it borrows from her original screenplay titled ‘Space MOMs’.
According to the report, Bharadwaj has alleged that the project infringes on the copyright of her original screenplay that she had shared with Kasbekar in 2016. She has claimed that Kasbekar’s team negotiated the deal for Balan’s new movie.
The suit claimed that Bharadwaj had registered her screenplay with the US Copyright Office in 2016 after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had notified her of its support for her movie and arranged for her to interview several of its engineers.
The suit is likely to come up for hearing soon.
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