Yash Raj Films to sue makers of Jabardasth?

Looks like the latest Siddharth and Samantha-starrer is gearing up for some legal wrangles. Jabardasth, which has the lead stars playing event managers, has been accused of being a ‘freemake’ of the 2010 Bollywood flick Band Baaja Baaraat, which is incidentally, being officially remade in Telugu with actor Nani.
Even as speculations are doing the rounds that YRF is rethinking their decision to do the Telugu remake due to these developments, Nani rubbishes the rumours. “The movie is on. It is going to be a bilingual and will release in Telugu and Tamil,” he confirms.
When asked to comment about director Nandini Reddy’s film, which shares a strikingly similar premise with Band Baaja…, he says, “I haven’t watched the film yet, but many people told me how similar Jabardasth is to the Hindi movie.” So is there any legal action in the offing? “I am not the producer to take any action.
But I’ve learnt that the production house (YRF) is planning to take the legal route,” he says. Meanwhile, Nandini vehemently denies copying the Hindi hit. “I never set out to make Band Baaja Baaraat and we never even got the feeling that it was similar when we were making the movie, says the director.
But then there is too much of a similarity (the wedding planning backdrop et al), isn’t it? “Look to start with, Sid and Sam play event managers in the movie and not wedding planners. They plan college fresher’s parties, corporate dos, Sashtipurthi functions and baby showers. The company with which we signed an in-film branding deal with is also an event management company.
I wanted a backdrop of event management because it adds colour and vibrancy to the movie. In any case, there have been many Hollywood movies with have been set in the backdrop of wedding planning. It just so happened that BBB is the only Hindi movie to have used that backdrop,” defends Nandini.
The filmmaker further contests that she as inspired by many movies. “You will find references to around 23 films in the movie. The climax with the dead body was inspired from Jane Bhi Do Yaaron. You will also see influences from a lot of Amitabh Bachchan movies like Yaarana and the style of filmmaking is very David Dhawan.
But none of these references seem to have registered. A filmmaker makes a movie from one point of view and what the audience perceives can be something entirely different. It could just imply that I failed as a story teller to convey what I wanted to in the movie. If there is some legal action then we’ll just have to see how it plays out,” says Nandini. Despite repeated efforts to contact YRF, we did not get any response.