This is not the first incident where producers are
facing a bone of contention over the title for the sequel. In the past, there
have many cases where presenters and producers have had creative differences
over going ahead with the second instalment of a film and turning it into a
franchise and it seems that the forthcoming production of Ashi Dua is facing a
similar situation.
Earlier we had reported that Ashi Dua is planning
to produce another anthology, similar to Bombay Talkies by
retaining its four directors Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Joharand
Anurag Basu. While just a day ago, the producer announced that the title of the
film to be Love and Lust, it seems that everyone referred to it
as Bombay Talkies 2 since the past few months [ever since the news
about it was released]. This probably did not go down well with Viacom 18 who
had collaborated with producer Ashi Dua for the 2013 anthology.
In fact, even when Karan Johar had kicked off his
film earlier this month he had captioned one of his pictures as
‘#bombaytalkies2’. Reportedly, Viacom 18 is miffed with the reference being
made to the 2013 anthology and has decided to take legal action against Ashi
Dua.
While Viacom is yet to
comment on the matter, Ashi Dua denies the reports stating that she hasn’t
received any legal notice. Although she agreed to the fact that the film is
indeed an anthology similar to Bombay Talkies, she was quick to assert that her
film’s title has nothing to do with it. In fact, she clearly stated that Love
and Lust has been finalized as the title of the film and also went on to add
that she is collaborating with Ronnie Screwvala for it. She also maintained
that her relations with Viacom is still good and that even though she has got
the same directors on board, Love and Lust is quite differently themed compared
to Bombay Talkies.