Actor Vijay’s Mersal was a blockbuster hit, but the controversy surrounding the movie is not over yet. During the release of Mersal, producer Kathiresan accused director Atlee of plagiarising the script of the film. The producer, who is also the vice president of Tamil Film Producers’ Council, claimed that he had the remake rights of Rajinikanth’s superhit movie Moondru Mugam, and accused Atlee of a similar script. His case against the director will be heard at the Madras High Court on February 21.
In 2018, the producer approached TFPC to sort out the issue. The council had meeting with both Atlee and Kathiresan, during which the producer played a 30 minute video comparing the movie Mersal with Moondru Mugam. He asked the director to compensate by giving a 30% remuneration from the profit they make on the movie. However, director Atlee claimed that though there may be some similarities, Mersal script was entirely written by him.
Refusing to compromise over the issue, the producer sought help of the Madras High Court, and filed a case against the director. Atlee, who is currently working on the pre-production of Vijay’s upcoming untitled film, is yet to respond to the issue.
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Mersal was a revenge story with Vijay in a triple role, and SJ Surya as the antagonist. The movie also starred Nithya Menon, Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Kajal Aggarwal. Bankrolled by Thenandal Studios, the movie became first film in Vijay’s career to enter the 200 crore club.
A similar issue happened with director AR Muragadoss’s Vijay starrer Sarkar too. The rights over the movie script was claimed by assistant director Varun Rajendran. He first filed a complaint with South Indian Film Writers’ Association, and later approached the court. AR Muragadoss gave in and agreed to credit his name in the title card, and thus Varun withdrew the case.