KOCHI: The star wars between the two big Ms of the Kerala film industry may now move to court as the makers of the latest Mammootty-starrer, Thoppil Joppan, have warned of legal action against those who try to rubbish the film on social media.
An image was circulated on social media with a message that the film would soon be telecast on a popular entertainment channel, implying that the movie will flop and make it to television sooner
than normal.
This was allegedly put out by Mohanlal fans as a ‘surgical strike’ on Mammootty fans who had been sharing posts trashing Mohanlal-starrer Pulimurugan. The tussle between the fans of the two camps turned ugly as both films were released on October 7, the first head-to-head match-up between the two superstars after a long time.
The makers of Thoppil Joppan posted on the film’s official Facebook page, “We have come across a few posts on social media on October 17 morning stating ‘Thoppil Joppan to hit the mini-screen soon’. The only motive behind this negative campaign is to destroy the movie’s success. We haven’t put out any information regarding the telecast of Thoppil Joppan on TV. We will take legal action against those spreading such fake news. We will bring to book all those who spread such news through Facebook and WhatsApp.”
A couple of days ago, actor-writer Murali Gopy commented, in a Facebook post, on this madness in the name of love for the superstars: “The word FAN was actually derived from FANATIC. Seeing the many absolutely abusive/mutually insulting fan-wars that are being waged on social media in the name of our superstars, I guess the original word was way more apt than the derived one!”(sic).
Incidentally, Gopy’s first screen venture in 2004 Rasikan (Fan) directed by Lal Jose had the backdrop of warring fan associations of Mohanlal and Mammootty.