Harry Potter: Hollywood takes on Bollywood with lawsuit against Hari Puttar
Randeep Ramesh in Delhi writing in The Guardian,
Tuesday September 16 2008

A Bollywood children's film, Hari Puttar, has been forced to postpone its premiere after the Hollywood studio behind the Harry Potter blockbusters took the Indian producers to court over the film's title.

Warner Brothers claims the Bollywood film sounds too similar to the teenage wizard and has refused the Indian studio's offer of putting a disclaimer in the title sequence. The Harry Potter films have grossed $4.5bn (£2.5bn) since 2001.

Hari Puttar was due to open last Friday but will now be shown later this month after Indian television networks refused to run promos for the film. A Delhi court is due to hear the case this month.

"The movie will come out on [September] 26," said a spokesman for the Mumbai studio Mirchi Movies. "We do not know about the exact legal position as of now."
Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors is a comedy shot in Yorkshire about a 10-year-old Indian boy whose family moves to England and becomes embroiled in a plan to save the world from two criminals. Hari is a popular Indian name and Puttar means "son" in Punjabi.

Read the full Guardian piece online.