Akshay Kumar, R Madhavan, Ananya Panday to star in untitled Dharma film

Mumbai: Actors Akshay Kumar, R Madhavan and Ananya Panday will feature in an upcoming movie on acclaimed lawyer C Sankaran Nair, who fought a legal battle against the British empire in the 1920s.

The film is based on the book The Case That Shook the Empire by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat.

Scheduled to be released in theatres on March 14, 2025, the untitled movie is backed by Karan Johar's Dharma Production in collaboration with Kumar's Cape of Good Films and Leo Media Collective.

The film will mark the directorial debut of writer Karan Singh Tyagi.

"An unknown story an unheard truth. Starring Akshay Kumar, R. Madhavan & Ananya Panday - this untitled film is releasing in cinemas on 14th March, 2025. Directed by Karan Singh Tyagi," Dharma Productions posted on social media.

According to the studio, the film centres around the "shocking cover-up of a massacre that pushed India's top barrister C Sankaran Nair to fight an unprecedented battle against the British Empire".

The Case That Shook the Empire was published in 2019 by Bloomsbury India and explored the 1924 defamation trial in which Michael O'Dwyer, former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab and the architect of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, sued Nair.

Nair had criticised British atrocities in Punjab in his book, leading to the widely reported trial that exposed the brutalities of British rule in India.