Apex court clears film release

Wanted to hit screen on Sept 18

A bench headed by Justice B N Agarwal ordered that the Salman Khan-starring film would be released after Kapoor’s Advocate Mukul Rohtagi offered to deposit Rs 2 crore with the Bombay High Court as a security amount.

Kapoor had challenged the order of the Bombay High Court that stayed the release of the film after LMB Holdings, a B4U group company, filed a petition saying that he refused to pay Rs 10 crore advance he had taken for the production of the film.

The High Court had directed Kapoor to furnish a security of Rs 10 crore in the form of bank guarantee and restrained him from releasing the film.

Rohtagi submitted that Kapoor and his company S K Enterprises was in a debt trap and had got funding from third parties to produce the film to raise funds.

However, the High Court had directed that the order would not affect the rights, if any, already created in favour of Sahara One Motion Pictures Ltd, which is a co-producer of Wanted.

Opposing Rohtagi’s plea, LMB counsel Ashok Desai submitted that Kapoor owed him Rs 10 crore and was bound to pay first before releasing his movie. “I (LMB) am a complete assignee of the film today. Why is he (Kapoor) backing out of his words... His other four films are still in air and only one film is in hand,” Desai said.

Acording to the petition, Kapoor had taken an advance of Rs 10 crore from LMB in 2006 for making five films. Under the June 2007 agreement, Kapoor and Sunil Rohra, the CEO of the B4U group of companies, had entered into a MoU contemplating a joint venture for acquiring and commercial exploitation of the films produced by the former within 90 days.