The Madras High Court issued notices on Tuesday to actor Vishal Krishna and director MS Anandan to respond by Thursday in regard to a plea filed by production house Trident Arts. In their plea, Trident Arts had requested for restraining the release of the upcoming film, Chakra, on the over-the-top (OTT) platform. Prior to issuing interim orders, Justice N. Sathish Kumar took the decision of hearing the actor and the director after the production house filed applications alleging a loss of Rs 8 crore due to the poor commercial response to the film, Action

Trident Arts' counsel Vijayan Subramaniam informed the judge that his production banner has distributed more than 500 films, but stepped into film production only in 2016, with four ventures produced to date and Action under Sundar. C's direction being the last. As per the counsel's version, Vishal had convinced Trident Arts to produce Action at a cost of Rs 44 crore, while also stating that the actor had accepted to compensate in case the film does not fetch a minimum of Rs 20 crore from box office collections in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone. The 2019 film managed to collect only Rs 7.7 crore in Tamil Nadu and Rs 4 crore in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The counsel for Trident Arts stipulated that Vishal was supposed to bear the shortfall of Rs 8.29 crore. This being the scenario, Vishal had agreed to compensate the financial losses in an agreement entered between him and the production house. He had consented to act in another film to be produced by Trident Arts under MS Anandan's direction to make good the loss. 

The fifth venture of the production firm was to be directed by Mr. Anandan who entered into a director engagement agreement. The counsel added that his applicant could not proceed with the production of the film due to the coronavirus lockdown. During the hearing, the banner claimed that they were shocked to hear reports of the film being planned for a release on the OTT platform. They further stated that the script of Chakra was the same film which it originally planned to make as its fifth production venture, while alleging that Vishal and MS Anandan got it produced through some other party. The counsel then claimed that the proposed original distribution amount for Chakra was Rs 44 crore on OTT platform and made an appeal to the court to stay the release of the film until the financial disputes are resolved through the process of arbitration after Vishal provides sureties for Rs 8.29 crore.