Time to Test This Legally: Shekhar Kapur on ‘Mr India’ Controversy
‘Mr India’ starred Anil Kapoor and Sridevi in lead roles.
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Recently, Sonam Kapoor took to Instagram to call out director Ali Abbas Zafar for announcing a spin-off of the 1987 film Mr India without consulting her father Anil Kapoor or the director Shekhar Kapur. On Saturday, Kapur took to social media to express his disappointment over not having any “creative rights” despite putting in effort.
He tweeted, “We sit with writers from day one, but are not the writer. Help actors hone performances but are not actors. Develop and create visual language of film. Slave hours over editing consoles. Directors lead and inspire every aspect of a film and have no creative rights? #MrIndia”
Filmmaker Kunal Kohli replied to the tweet saying, “@Javedakhtarjadu won a hard fought battle for the rights of lyricists & writers. Its time we did the same?”
To this Shekhar Kapur responded with, “Yes. It’s time to test this legally .. let’s do it ..”
On Sunday, Kapur tweeted a photo of the iconic villain Mogambo from Mr India, and wrote, “Kya Kaha? Mr India 2 ?? Is duniya mein koi aur Mogambo bhi hai ??” (What did you say? Mr India 2? Will you be able to find another Mogambo in this world?)
On 17 February, Ali Abbas Zafar announce a Mr India trilogy. He wrote, “Excited to partner with @ZeeStudios_ for an epic trilogy #MrIndia! It is a huge responsibility to carry forward an iconic character loved by everyone. Currently, working on the script, no actor has been locked till now. Once we lock the first draft of the script, casting begins!”
In light of this, Sonam Kapoor took to social media to reveal that she “found out about it (the remake) through social media.” She called the move “quite disrespectful and underhanded” considering Shekhar and Anil were “two people who played a major role in making the film what it was and is”.
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