Thursday was a tumultuous day for the makers of The Kerala Story 2. After Kerala High Court passed an interim stay order, the producers made an appeal to Division Bench to hold an urgent hearing. After hearing the revised arguments from the producers, represented by Neeraj Kishan Kaul, the Division Bench reserves its judgment on the interim stay order.

Resultantly, the makers of The Kerala Story 2 were compelled to cancel the morning shows of their film across the country. While leading chain like PVR INOX has taken off all listings of the film, small theatre chains like Miraj, Maxus and Gold (in Mumbai) are still showing movie shows from afternoon onwards.

In the urgent hearing that was held on Thursday evening, the producers argued that they stand to suffer major commercial losses if the film doesn’t release as scheduled. They stayed, “This order has to be stayed as we cannot commercially destroy free speech in this manner by such injunctions. Because of how digital servers are used for international release work, if it is not released tomorrow, there will be piracy everywhere.”

Directed by Kamakhya Narayan Singh and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, The Kerala Story 2 stars Ulka Gupta, Aditi Bhatia, and Aishwarya Ojha.