Vijay Deverakonda-starrer Kingdoms distributor approaches Madras High Court searching for police safety for theatres in Tamil Nadu

The Tamil Nadu theatrical rights holder of Telugu actor Vijay Deverakonda-starrer Kingdom has approached the Madras High Court to restrain Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) chief coordinator S. Seeman and his followers from interfering with the screening of the film in cinema halls on the alleged floor that it portrays the Tamil Eelam subject in a derogatory method.

The writ petitioner SSI Production additionally sought a route to the Director General of Police, Greater Chennai Commissioner of Police and Coimbatore Commissioner of Police to offer enough police safety to the cinema theatres screening the film that has been launched in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The petition has been listed for listening to earlier than Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy on Wednesday (August 6, 2025).

Filing an affidavit in help of the writ petition, Ok. Abhilash of SSI Production said that the trilingual film Kingdom had been produced with an enormous funds of ₹130 crore. It had been produced by Sithara Entertainments and directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri, who had acquired the nationwide award for his earlier movie ‘Jersey’ below one of the best Telugu movie class.

Further stating that well-known music composer Anirudh Ravichander from Tamil Nadu had scored the music for Kingdom, the deponent mentioned the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) too had issued a certificates on July 30, 2025 for its theatrical launch. However, on August 4, Mr. Seeman had raised a grievance in regards to the film by tweeting on his X deal with.

This had led to his followers issuing threats to a few of the cinema theatre house owners in Chennai and Coimbatore in opposition to the screening of the film. “Some cinema corridor house owners have already expressed apprehension and reluctance to proceed screening the movie because of the concern of regulation and order disturbances…  It has additionally created concern among the many basic Public and theatre workers,” the deponent mentioned.

Pointing out the CBFC was the statutory authority to certify whether or not a movie was match for public exhibition or not, the petitioner mentioned the political events couldn’t take regulation into their palms and stop the exhibition of films. It would quantity to curbing the elemental proper to speech and expression and the police have been obligation sure to intrude when such a proper will get threatened, it added.

The petitioner additionally relied upon the Supreme Court verdicts in S. Rangarajan versus P. Jagjivan Ram (1989) and Nachiketa Walhekar versus CBFC (2018) whereby it had been held that after a movie had been cleared for public screening by the CBFC, it couldn’t be subjected to extrajudicial censorship or prevented from public screening by non-public people or organisations.