Media and Entertainment Law

Bhandari Law & Partners has been a pioneer in media and entertainment law in Nepal, representing clients across motion picture, television, theatre, news media, production and distribution houses, podcasts, radio, fashion, and music — actors, writers, directors, producers, composers, musicians, comedians, content creators, models, and designers among them. We also act for production, distribution, syndication, broadcast, and financing companies, and extend our work to sport organizations, athletes, coaches, and sports personalities, whose legal needs overlap with the entertainment industry more than people often expect.

 

The Legal Framework

Entertainment work in Nepal sits mainly across the Copyright Act, 2059 (2002), which governs literary, artistic, musical, and audiovisual works and grants both economic and moral rights to authors and performers — economic rights covering reproduction, distribution, and public performance, and moral rights protecting an author's claim to their work and its integrity, separate from whoever holds the commercial rights. Registration isn't mandatory for copyright protection in Nepal, which matters in practice: a creator's rights exist from the moment of creation, but proving ownership and chain of title in a dispute is far easier when the paperwork — contracts, assignment agreements, credit records — has been handled properly from the start.

 

Film specifically carries its own regulatory layer through the Motion Picture (Production, Exhibition and Distribution) Act and the Film Development Board, which oversees censorship, exhibition licensing, and, increasingly, licensing for digital platforms screening film content. The sector is also facing a genuine piracy problem that's moved from physical bootlegging to phone recordings of cinema screenings circulated on social media — the Film Development Board has had to issue public notices on this, and it's a live enforcement gap the industry is still working through, with a broader copyright law reform reportedly in progress.

 

What We Do

Drafting and reviewing agreements

We draft and review the full range of contracts this industry runs on — production agreements, distribution deals, talent and performance contracts, licensing arrangements, endorsement and sponsorship agreements, and financing documents — built to actually reflect how entertainment deals get structured, not generic commercial templates.

 

Protecting intellectual property rights

We protect the IP rights of celebrities and the companies associated with them — copyright in creative works, performers' rights, and the commercial value tied to a person's name, image, and likeness, which matters enormously for public figures whose brand is often their primary asset.

 

Representing disputes

 We represent clients in disputes involving celebrities and entertainment companies, whether that's a contractual disagreement, a copyright infringement claim, or a conflict over credit, royalties, or rights ownership.

 

Our Approach

We've built our reputation on being artist-friendly — representation that helps clients make the right decisions, protect their creative work, and stand behind them when a dispute actually arises, rather than treating creative professionals the way a firm might treat a standard corporate client. Entertainment work runs on relationships and reputations as much as contracts, and we try to advise with that reality in mind.