IP is a graveyard. We’re currently living through a period where the most valuable thing a media company can own isn’t a good script or a visionary director, but a deed to a corpse.
Soham Rockstar Entertainment—a name that sounds less like a film studio and more like a mid-tier Vegas residency—just reminded everyone of that fact. They’ve issued a public notice, a digital "keep off the grass" sign, claiming they hold the exclusive rights to the 1980 classic Do Aur Do Paanch. They aren't just saying they own it; they’re threatening "civil and criminal proceedings" against anyone who even thinks about making a remake, a sequel, or a "reimagined" version.
It’s a classic shakedown in the modern attention economy.
The original film was a breezy action-comedy featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor as two rival burglars trying to outsmart each other. It was fun. It was light. It worked because of the chemistry between two of the biggest stars in the history of the medium. Fast forward forty-four years, and that chemistry has been distilled into a legal asset. A line item on a balance sheet.
This is the friction of the modern remake industrial complex. We’ve run out of new ideas, so we’ve started cannibalizing the 80s. But you can’t just grab a shovel and start digging. You have to pay the toll. Deepak Mukut’s outfit is making sure that if anyone wants to tap into that specific vein of nostalgia, the check goes to them first.
Don't mistake this for a passion project about preserving cinema. It’s about rent-seeking. In the streaming era, platforms are desperate for "IP with a built-in audience." It’s a term of art for "stuff people recognize while scrolling on their phones at 11 PM." Owning the rights to a movie like Do Aur Do Paanch isn't about making a great film; it’s about owning a piece of the map. If a big-name producer at a major studio decides they want a buddy-cop project with a retro vibe, Soham Rockstar wants to be the one standing at the gate with their hand out.
The cost of these rights isn't just the sticker price. It’s the creative tax. When a studio spends a fortune securing the "legal clearance" for a remake, they aren't going to take risks. They’re going to play it safe. They’re going to cast the most bankable, least offensive stars they can find. They’re going to polish the grit off the original until it’s a shiny, boring piece of content that fits perfectly into an algorithm.
We see this play out in tech all the time. Patent trolls buy up obscure filings from the 90s just to sue companies that actually build things. This is the entertainment version of that. It’s the weaponization of the archive.
The notice specifically mentions "remake, prequel, sequel, or any other unauthorized adaptation." That’s a wide net. It’s enough to kill a project in development before it even gets a title. Why would a director spend two years of their life on a script if there’s a chance a legal notice from Soham Rockstar is going to land on their desk on day one of production? It’s easier to just make another generic superhero movie or a TikTok-friendly musical.
It’s also a sign of how desperate the mid-tier film industry has become. If you can’t win at the box office with something new, you sue your way into relevance. You hoard the past because you’re terrified of the future.
The legal notice is a blunt instrument. It doesn't care about the art. It doesn't care that Do Aur Do Paanch was itself a riff on a dozen other tropes that came before it. It only cares about the copyright filing. In a world where every frame of film is being indexed and monetized, the lawyers are the new auteurs.
So, if you were planning on writing a witty screenplay about two charming thieves in bell-bottoms, you might want to check your bank account first. Or better yet, come up with something that hasn't been sitting in a vault for four decades.
But we both know that won’t happen. It’s much easier to sue over the ghost of a hit than it is to dream up a new one.
In an industry where 2+2 is increasingly equaling a lawsuit rather than five, who’s actually left to do the math?