by Ratan Jain, the producer of the original ‘Khiladi’, which starred Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan, has moved the court with a plea to change the title of Ravi Teja’s film and stall the release on OTT and other platforms. Speaking to ETimes Jain said, “We want the court to instruct the producers to change the title of the film as the ‘Khiladi’ title is registered with us under the trademark act and while the release of the film that stars Ravi Teja is not going to incur us financial losses, it is about the reputation of the ‘Khiladi’ films.”
Jain believes South films that release in pan-India markets with Hindi titles are potentially going to cause damage to Bollywood and he feels that a few individuals from the Hindi film industry are backstabbing their own peers. Jain added, “After ‘Pushpa’ released and did some good business here, there are many who will try to emulate that same thing and the biggest example today is ‘Khiladi’ that has Ravi Teja as the hero. The people who will watch this movie will really not know who is going to be in the film when they click on it online. But their clicking decision will be influenced by the name ‘Khiladi’, which is a very popular title and that belongs to us.”
Speaking about how it is done down South, Jain said, “The associations down South register Hindi titles for Telugu films in their local offices and then they are dubbed and released in Hindi with the same title. This happens because the CBFC has allowed dubbed films with the titles similar to Hindi films, to release across the country. But this was not the case some years ago.”
He added, “We don’t get to know if a Hindi title is registered down South. We had no idea about Ravi Teja’s ‘Khiladi’ and the worst part is that a Hindi film production is involved with this release and we were not told about it. No permissions were taken from us, either. The CBFC has said that if you have registered a title in Telugu then you can release the film with the same title. The board really doesn’t know the consequences of such things on our business and how such practices harm the original producer. It not only hurts our business prospects it hampers the reputation of a brand that we own. That is what they have done with ‘Khiladi’.”
Jain revealed that the producers behind Ravi Teja’s Hindi dubbed ‘Khiladi’ adopted a sly strategy. He said, “The film was to release on February 11 and they released the trailer only on February 8, so that we are not alerted well in time to take necessary action. But we have moved the court and the judge has told us that it’s too late to take an action against their film.”
