Inspiration or Plagiarism and what Hollywood should do!



Aakrosh” and “Knock off” were released last Friday. They bore striking similarities. It is neither the genre or the story line that made these two films similar. Both were inspired or plagiarized from successful Hollywood movies. While “Aakrosh” took it’s origins from “Mississippi Burning”, “Knock Out” owed it’s roots to “Phone Booth”.

Looking at the technical team behind "Knock Out”, I had little desire to watch this one! The trailers showed a Irfan Khan trapped inside a phone booth that I have never come across during my existence in India! It is roomier than the bedrooms in a 1BHK apartment! The floors are so clean that you could sleep on the floor! I will stop at that. You will find zillion small things like this to laugh about while watching these trailers. The scale was titled towards “Aakrosh” for Priyadarshan, Ajay Devgn and Paresh Rawal. If worse comes to worse, I will still be able to see some picture perfect shots on the screen. Priyadarshan has a knack to turn a mundane location into a breathtaking visual.

“Aakrosh” turned out to be an okay fare. The effects of the movie was far reaching. I kept wondering whether it was a scene-to-scene copy of “Mississippi Burning”. Since I saw the source of inspiration years back, there was a renewed interest to watch it again. I’m sure there are many like me!

In a country like India, the inspired or the plagiarized movies offer a good market for Hollywood. Instead of getting into a legal battle with the makers, the Hollywood studios should do the following to combat plagiarism.

  1. They should re-release the originals along with these inspired or plagiarized movies in theaters.
  2. They should dub it into as many languages as possible for reaching out to more people.
  3. They should sponsor bad reviews of the inspired or plagiarized movies.
  4. They should release the DVD of the originals (and dubbed) in a short while after the theatrical release.

With the kind of insane budgets and also their representatives in India, this should be easy to do. I’m sure they can recover their investment if they consider the kind of viewers India has to offer.

Picture Courtesy: http://www.pharmainfo.net

Tags: Musings,Inspiration,Plagiarism,Hollywood

Comments

  1. Oh. its not a new thing. west was always our movie makers inspiration. even sholay was inspired. i have posted few montHs back on some movies that i felt were the worst of the lot.

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  2. @Harish - Now, Hollywood has suddenly woken up to this! They have been issuing notice to Indian film makers!

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  3. thats great news. seems directors abbas mastan and david dhawan will be in worst trap.

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  4. back from a similar experience with a malayalam movie ....

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  5. I thought aakrosh was supposed to be based on the honour killings in Haryana.
    Our film makers have done this before. Hollywood should wake up big time. Indian audience deserves better than this. There are plenty of good authors in India who can write original stories for our films.

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  6. Inspiration! That's becoming a rather stale excuse isn't it, with the scene-by-scene lift from one movie to another. Hollywood (or other sources of inspiration) didn't understand our language, perhaps why they didn't sue earlier :)

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  7. Did you see Taxi No. 9211, this movie was the only exception I've known. Heard a movie was made in German after getting inspired by this movie.

    You have a nice blog, by the way! :)

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  9. Mississippi burning was a very powerful & evocative movie...deeply moving. Phone booth was a gripping movie even if most of the frames in the movie were etched on to the main character in a booth....Bollywood cant even come near these movie in terms of reproducibility & I am sure copying them would make them fall flat o their faces.

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