3 minutes of readingChennaiFebruary 7, 2026 05:57 pm IST
The legal problems surrounding Hera Pheri 3 refuse to end. after the confrontation between the film’s lead actors, Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal, The film has now fallen into a new copyright controversy. A south Indian producer has approached the Madras High Court alleging that producer Firoz Nadiadwala does not own the rights to the franchise. Now, the future of the sequel remains uncertain.
According to Bar and Bench, production company Seven Arts International has claimed that Nadiadwala only had the rights to remake one film: the Hindi adaptation of the Malayalam original Ramji Rao Speaking (1989). This adaptation was the first Hera Pheri film, released in 2000 and directed by Priyadarshan. However, the south Indian producer alleged that Nadiadwala breached the contract and made the sequel Phir Hera Pheri in 2006, and then transferred the rights to the franchise to a third party. In this case, the third is Akshay Kumar’s production company, Cape of Good Films.
Following these allegations, the Madras High Court questioned producer Firoz Nadiadwala on whether he is legally permitted to make the film while the matter is still in dispute.
Speaking to Hindustan Times, GP Vijayakumar, CEO of Seven Arts International, said that he bought the rights of the film from the original producers. “I bought all the rights of the Hera Pheri franchise from the original producers of Ramji Rao Speaking, Adithya Films in 2022. I was informed that Firoz Nadiadwala had been given the right to make a Hindi version of the film. But he made a second version which was released in 2006. He is not allowed to make a sequel or prequel or use the characters,” he said.
He further stated that he did not approach the court when the second sequel was made, preferring to let bygones be bygones, and wanted to produce the third installment of the Hindi film. However, he later found out that Nadiadwala had sold the rights to Akshay Kumar. “While the first film was directed by Priyadarshan, with whom we are close, the second film was directed by Neeraj Vora, and the copyright holders at that time were not aware of what had happened. The original producers and I realized much later that Nadiadwala had committed rape and cheating. At that time we thought ho ho gaya, ho gaya. We will produce the next version in Hindi. We approached actor Akshay Kumar to do the same and that’s when we learned that “Nadiadwala has sold the rights to Akshay’s production house, Cape of Good Films. We sent Nadiadwala a legal notice on how he could sell something that did not belong to him. “I had no choice but to move the court,” he said.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Akshay Kumar’s production house told the publication that they had bought the rights to the film assuming that Firoz Nadiadwala had full ownership of the Hera Pheri franchise.