Sholay 3D gets a clean chit, Ramesh Sippy’s plea discarded

The 3D version of original Sholay was behind stands sometime back but the Bombay High Court yesterday provided relief by rejecting a plea against it. Filmmaker Ramesh Sippy of 1975’s hit flick Sholay moved a plea saying that his copyrights have been infringed and requested to halt its release but a division bench of Justice SJ Vazifdar and Justice GS Patel refused to restrain the move.

Pen India Pvt. Ltd. and its owner Jayantilal Gada are creating Sholay 3D starring Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini and late Amjad Khan. For this, the exchange of exclusive rights of the film was being done between Sippy Films Pvt. Ltd. and Pen India, where the latter paid an amount of Rs. 25 crore for the same. But, now Sippy has filed a complaint saying that he is the first owner of the copyrights in Sholayand other four films Seeta Aur Geeta, Saagar, Shaan and Andaz and that he wants an interim stay on Sholay 3D.

He also mentioned in his plea that he has found infringement of his copyrights but the bench refused his petition on primarily ground remarking that the films’ copyrights are not protected. They commented that Sippy has never bothered to protect the copyrights of his films and is seeking the courts way for the first time in 40 years. The thriller-drama-action releasing on January 3 next year, is much awaited. R. D. Burman, Basu Manohari and Maruti Rao have given their compositions for this venture.