The apparent rift between Bharathiraja and Bala over filming the story 'Kuttraparambarai' has escalated into a strong feud between the two most respected filmmakers of Tamil cinema. When Bala announced making 'Kuttraparambarai' with Arvind Swamy, Vishal, Arya, Atharvaa and Rana Daggubatti there were strong reactions from Bharathiraja who said that decades back he had wanted to do a film on the subject penned by Rathnakumar and had approached Sivaji Ganesan and Sarathkumar to do the lead roles and claimed that only he had the rights to do the subject and used strong words on Bala following which writer Rathnakumar too verbally attacked Bala.

Bala called for a press conference and has issued a warning to Bharathiraja and Rathnakumar to stop abusing him or face consequences. He further stated that he is going to go ahead with adapting the story of 'Kootaanchoru' written by Vela Ramamurthy which was later republished as 'Kuttraparambarai'. He was of the opinion that while Bharathiraja and Rathnakumar are trying to film the historical occurrences he is going to film the story and like how anyone has the right to film Jallianwala Bhag massacre similarly anyone has the right to film any historical event in his own way.