The instance of writer and filmmaker Abhishek Kapoor taking Farhan & Zoya Akhtar’s production house Excel Entertainment to court is a rare occurrence in Bollywood. Usually when accusations of a stolen story idea or script come up, it involves a relatively new or a struggling writer, who charges an established filmmaker, producer or studio of plagiarism.
In an industry where a written contract is still considered an inconvenience, there are any number of such accusations that fly around, especially when a major film is ready for release. But it is hearty to note that there have been two recent instances where relatively unknown writers have stood up against a bigger Bollywood entity and have had a ruling in their favour for cases of plagiarism or credit theft.
In 2012, writer Kapil Chopra had approached the Film Writers’ Association (FWA), with the contention that Jannat 2 produced by Mukesh Bhatt was based on his original script Zero which was registered with the FWA in 2007. After a preliminary enquiry the FWA found that there had been a blatant violation of copyright infringement and took the matter to the Bombay High Court. The HC ruled in Kapil’s favour and restrained the satellite release of Jannat 2 until the writer was adequately compensated. On the basis of the rules of minimum wages of the Film Writers’ Association, Kapil Chopra got the Bhatts to cough up Rs 9.62 lakhs.
More recently writer Jyoti Kapoor accused filmmaker Kunal Kohli of ripping off her script for his new film Phir Se. Jyoti complained to the FWA about the infringement and when the filmmaker denied her charges, the writer wrote an interesting post on Facebook about the entire episode titled Chori Aur Scene-A-Zori which vent viral amongst the filmmaking community. The FWA’s verdict found Kunal Kohli guilty of plagiarism. But since the filmmaker went ahead with shoot of Phir Se undeterred, according to sources the writer has now approached the court to put a stay on the release of the film.
Currently the balance of power in Bollywood is heavily tilted against writers. Aspiring writers who submit scripts to producers and studios are asked to sign away any rights they have even before someone has a look at their submissions. And the FWA is still fighting to get the Producers’ Association to establish a minimum wage criteria for script writers.
However one hopes that these instances of David versus Goliath in Bollywood, will make established Bollywood players realize that they need to play by the rules and not merely go by ‘might is right’.
(With inputs from Priyanka Jain)
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