Hari Puttar Not Coming Your Way If Warner Bros Has Its Say

Over the years, there have been thousands of rubbish fan versions of Harry Potter as they try to plug the void until JK Rowling scribbles another book.

The amusing for five seconds Harry Pothead series was a hit with morons everywhere, and recently an independent encyclopedia detailing all the characters, spells and abuse suffered by pupils from Dumbledore was due for release.

So imagine Warner Brothers’ delight when it found out about an up and coming film called Hari Puttar. Their lawyers cast some magic spells immediately to stop the film being released.

It’s been a frantic couple of months for the Harry Potter brand. Only a few weeks ago was it announced that the film was being pushed back from November till summer 2009. At first, all blame was placed on Daniel Radcliffe wanting to take advantage of his winky-waving ability and include it in a scene with Hermione all about the rights of passage of her becoming a fully fledged woman. However the real reason was apparently due to fine tweaking of the movie and definitely not Warner Bros not having any films ready for next summer to make money from.

Now, Hollywood is responsible for Harry Potter, whilst India’s Bollywood film industry has produced Hari Puttar. Granted, the two sound vaguely similar which will have caused a high ranking businessman to drop his double decaf filtered latte with extra sprinkles on to the floor.

But before all Harry Potter’s fans cast spells and attempt to fly over to India to hurl magic wands at the people of the country, bear in mind what the words mean. A simple translation of the seemingly copyright infringing title Hari Puttar means Son Of Harry. That’s because Hari is a popular Indian name for a boy and Puttar means son in the Punjabi language.

Of course, the traditional values of a country mean nothing to a Hollywood agent who may lose his $1million bonus. Consequently, the Hari Puttar film is still being sued. We don’t think the studio will win once you read what the plot is about. BBC News reports:

“It tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who moves to England with his parents and becomes embroiled in a battle over a secret microchip.”

Unless the film starred Adam Sandler, that sort of thing would never be commissioned for a slack-jawed audience to lap up. Unless Warner Brothers plan to release a film in the future where Harry has an adopted son with his former school teacher and they need a microchip to combat him breaking his ASBO order, we don’t see it working.

Hari Puttar was apparently registered in 2005 according to BBC News, so it appears that Warner Brothers are attempting to bully the film into never being shown. We’re sure a judge will see sense when the issue comes to court in India on September 12. If anything, a suitable ruling would be to make sure Warner Brothers can’t release anymore gash adaptations of books.