When a smart, love story-infused revenge saga like Ghajini sweeps the box office, becoming the only Indian film to earn Rs 100 crore across the country in under a week, it hardly surprises anyone. The film, starring Aamir Khan, was refreshingly unusual for Indian audiences.
But what if the extraordinary story wasn’t screenwriter A R Murugadoss’ own? By now, most movie-goers know it wasn’t. They may have even seen the original, American academy award-winning film, Memento (2002).
For many years Bollywood producers have been greenlighting derivatives of foreign films - many of them American. As Sanjay Chel, screenwriter of Partner (2007), which many agree is a replication of the American movie Hitch (2005), says, “We get inspired.” All this while, Hollywood - thousands of miles away and largely unaware of Indian cinema - did not notice that its films were being copied.
But the jig is up. Since the turn of the century, when the government granted official status to Bollywood as an industry, the US slowly started to become aware of Indian cinema. And now, the collision of Los Angeles and Mumbai has put the spotlight on intellectual property rights (IPR). In Bollywood, growing awareness and enforcement of IPR is pushing producers toward more original, local fare. As for Hollywood, it has started going after the copycats.
On June 15, the Bombay High Court stayed the release of BR Films’ Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai, which 20th Century Fox alleges is a remake of their 1992 Oscar Award-winning film My Cousin Vinny. In April, Warner Bros. issued a public notice against any adaptation or remake of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, following rumours that Vipul Shah was making a copycat fil
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