Title trouble for Kollywood flicks

Everyone knows there’s a battle between Thuppakki and Kallathuppakki in court over the title. And such issues over titles appear to be creeping with alarming regularity in Tamil cinema despite the checks established by most of the K-Town trade bodies.Says Logiyaas, director, Kallathuppakki, “Our contention is that both the films’ titles are similar. Since theirs is a huge film, they are going to opt for heavy promotions. But, for the average man, our film will appear to be a dubbed film that may be looking to ride on a big-budget film, even if we had registered this title in 2010. We're doing this only because this title will affect the business prospects of our film.”

“It’s true that the Tamil Film Producers’ Council (TFPC) has established checks and to test whether those rules are being followed, we tried to register the title Thuppakki 2012 under a brand new banner, but they rejected saying it was very similar to Thuppakki. But, they never raised this objection when the Thuppakki team registered their title,” he claims.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, members within the Producers’ Guild and TFPC revealed to CT that the checks regarding titles were brought in when they learned of a few individuals blocking titles and later using it to blackmail interested producers. But they admit that there are occasions when the similar title or a similar-sounding one gets approved and so they blame this on human error.

Recently, when a producer objected to the title Thaandavam claiming that he had registered it first, it was arbitrated and ruled in favour of the Vikram-starrer because the claimant was not capable of produce a film as a result of financial difficulties.

A member of the producers’ guild says, “Recently, we had an identical issue with the title Samar. Vishal’s film with director Thiru had initially been named Samaran and later the team had applied to get it changed to Samar. However, we talked about that another team had registered the title and rejected it.”

However, Thiru informs us that they got in contact with the producer who had registered the title and so they have mutually agreed that Vishal’s film will retain Samar because the title.

How is a title registered?

Producers, with a registered company, can register a title.

Registration happens by applying to TFPC, Film Chamber or Producers’ Guild with a fee of Rs 500.

The body cross-checks to look if the title exists. If yes, the applying is rejected; else, it’s registered.

Checks also are done on similar-sounding titles and if issues arise, the members discuss the problem and take a decision.

The registered title has to then be renewed by the producer until the movie gets censored by paying a renewal fee.