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 $4.5 billion since 2001.
Hari Puttar was due to open on September 12 but will now only 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 Saturday," said a spokesman for the Mumbai studio Mirchi Movies. "We do not know about the exact legal position."
Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors is a comedy shot in Yorkshire, northern England, about a 10-year-old Indian boy whose family moves to the UK 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.
The next instalment of J K Rowling's franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is not expected to be released until next summer.
Warner Bros claims Hari Puttar infringes its intellectual property rights.
Indian critics have claimed that the story is strikingly similar to 20th Century Fox's 1990 film Home Alone.
However, the London-based director Lucky Singh dismissed the comparisons. "The film that you mentioned neither has songs nor animation."
