Abhishek Kapoor takes Farhan Akhtar to court over script credit of Rock On!! 2

Filmmaker Abhishek Kapoor has filed a case against Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment for not giving him script credit in the sequel of Rock On!. The case is expected to come up for hearing today at the Bombay High Court. According to a Mumbai Mirror report, Kapoor has asked the court to stop the production of the film and to instruct the producers to not enter into any third party agreement. Kapoor claims he and writer Pubali Chaudhuri had worked together on the Rock On!! 2’s script since 2011. However, after some “creative disagreement” with Excel Entertainment, Chaudhuri ditched Kapoor and secretly registered the script of Rock On!! 2 (written by both of them) under only her name with the Film Writers’ Association. [caption id=“attachment_2162271” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Kapoor complains that Chaudhuri avoided him and his efforts to resolve issues with the production house also did not yield results. Talking about Excel Entertainment, Kapoor alleged that since Rock On! was his first film, he trusted the production house with the contract. However, on reviewing it, he found several clauses that were in favour of Excel and some that are completely contradictory to the Copyright Act. In his lawsuit, Kapoor also blames Chaudhuri for the ‘breach of trust’ and says, “The mala fide conduct of Chaudhuri can be seen from the fact that when the plaintiff (Kapoor) addressed an email, she did not dispute the contents whereby Kapoor referred the script as ‘our script’.” When Akhtar was asked to address the issue between Excel Entertainment and Kapoor, the actor played it down and said, “I would much rather the court decide since it’s gone there. I have nothing to say. He’s a friend of mine and I don’t want to talk about him in public.” However, Chaudhuri has a completely different story to tell. She told The Indian Express that she has filed a complaint against Kapoor with the Film Writers Association last June because he had also registered the script of Rock on!! 2, which was written solely by her. Chaudhuri said, “I was working on the project (Rock on!!2) as a writer and Abhishek was supposed to be the director, so there there were a few discussions. Then there was a gap in the project and I was informed that Abhishek was no longer directing the project. Since I had a contract with the producers (Excel Entertainment) that I was bound to honour, I carried on working and re-worked on the story and script since then.” Rock On!! 2 was slated to go into production this August. Starring Farah Akhtar, who is also the producer of the film, in the lead role, Rock On!!2 is also expected to feature Arjun Rampal.