A 3-second video clip, yes just a clip of 3 seconds is at the centre of all talks in Kollywood or the Tamil film industry right now. It has started an ugly public and legal feud between two of the biggest stars in the industry – Dhanush and Nayanthara. Let’s take a look at what the controversy is about and what netizens have to say.
It all started with the recently released Netflix documentary on Nayanthara’s life, Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairytale, but the controversy goes nearly a decade back. In 2015 Nayanthara starred in the film Naanum Rowdy Dhaan. The director of the movie was Vignesh Shivan, who married Nayanthara in 2022. When Netflix wanted to make a biopic based on Nayanthara’s life, it wanted to include excerpts from the movie as it was a major success in both of their careers and has been credited with encouraging their union. Here comes the catch in the story – the movie was produced by Dhanush’s company Wunderbar Films.
The controversy came to the limelight when Nayanthara took to her Instagram on 16th November and blasted Dhanush in an open letter. According to the post, she spent two years “battling it out” with Dhanush for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) granting Netflix permission to use songs and clips from the movie. When all the requests were responded to with just silence, Netflix and Nayanthara decided to use a short clip captured on her phone on the sets of the movie. However, Dhanush didn’t just refuse her request, he sent her a legal notice demanding Rs 10 crore in damages for the use of “a mere 3 seconds” of BTS footage due to a “personal grudge” against her.
In the recent development of the case, the Madras High Court allowed Wunderbar Films, to file a civil suit against Netflix, Nayanthara, and Vignesh Shivan. Not going into much technicalities of copyright laws, to put it simply, Wunderbar Films has called it copyright infringement. The Nayanthara camp even claims that the 3-second footage used in the documentary was from a personal mobile phone and has not been taken from the movie’s footage. However, Dhanush’s side is arguing that the footage was shot by persons they hired including the director, Vignesh Shivan, and was uploaded to their YouTube channel in 2015.
The court case has multiple legal nuances in the sections ‘fair dealing’, “Copyright Act”, and “Artist agreement” and it will have to see what was the intention in using the BTS footage from Naanum Rowdy Dhaan and the ‘size’ of the harm caused to the parties. No matter which side the case swings, this high-profile feud certainly exposes a lot of truth about the gender dynamics and the power structure that is part of probably every film industry.
While people’s reaction on the internet was divided, it was pleasant to see many from the industry liking Nayanthara’s post and showing their support, particularly the female stars working predominantly in Southern Indian cinema.
