Chiyaan Vikram starrer Thangalaan has been approved by The Madras High Court for theatrical release on Wednesday after producer K.E. Gnanavelraja complied with the court's direction to deposit Rs. 1 crore into the account of the Official Assignee of the High Court. The film will now be released globally on August 15.
The submission made by the lawyer for the film producer, Niranjan Rajagopal, that the money had been placed with the Official Assignee per the court's directive was noted by the Madras High Court Division Bench, which is made up of Justices G. Jayachandran and C.V. Karthikeyan.
The court observed that there shall be no impediment to releasing the movie worldwide on Thursday. There was an agreement between the producer of the movie, Gnanavelraja and businessman Arjunlal Sunderdas (since dead) in 2011 for co-producing a movie by investing Rs 40 crore each.
As per the agreement, the latter invested Rs 12.85 crore but decided to back off midway due to a paucity of funds. In 2014, the Madras High Court declared the Arjunlal Sundardas insolvent and directed the Official Assignee to take stock of all his assets and liabilities so that hundreds of people who had deposited money in his real estate and finance companies could be repaid their dues.
While conducting an assessment as directed by the court, the Official Assignee found that the producer of the movie, Gnanavelraja had to repay Rs 10.35 crore to the insolvent.
The official assignee filed an application before the High Court in 2016 seeking a direction to the film producer to repay the amount with 18 per cent interest from 2013.
The Division Bench allowed the application in 2019 and directed the producer to repay the amount with interest. However, since this order was not complied with, the Official Assignee moved the High Court periodically before the release of every other movie produced by Gnanavelraja.
The Official Assignee had filed an execution petition seeking to attach Gnanavelraja’s new movies ‘Thangalaan’ as well as Suriya-starrer ‘Kanguva’ which is due to be released in October.
Passing orders in the execution petition on Monday, the Division Bench had ordered that both the movies could be released only after the producer deposits Rs 1 crore each.
Gnanavelraja subsequently filed a compliance report with respect to ‘Thangalaan’ on Wednesday and obtained permission for its release.
