Kangana Ranaut starrer Queen copied?

Queen’s storyline, written by Abhigyan Jha, was based on a film by director Parvati Balagopalan.

Queen may have had a successful run at the box office, but unfortunately could be deep in controversy. The Kangana Ranaut starrer has been the biggest winner in Bollywood this year. From critics to audiences, all have lauded this coming-of-age story of a woman who goes on a honeymoon alone after getting dumped by her bridegroom on the day of wedding. In time, she learns to live life for herself. How liberating and fresh a concept that is, or so we had thought! Director Vikas Bahl has been accused of copying the entire premise of the film from another movie Phir Zindagi, which is yet to be released, Hindustan Times reported.

Director Parvati Balagopaly made a film based on a story by Abhigyan Jha. The film stars Milind Soman and Gul Panag in the lead roles.

The writer of the movie, Abhigyan Jha, was quoted saying: “We all saw the film (Queen) pretty late and we were shocked. Our film was shown to Vikas back in 2006 when he was with UTV Spotboy. He then went on to use the same premise in Queen. In fact, some of the scenes too have been lifted. The screenplay is slightly different, but the basic premise of a girl going for her honeymoon alone is the same.”

Phir Zindagi was completed in 2006, when Jha showed it to Vikas, but due to several reasons it could not be released back then. Jha wishes to take legal action against Bahl, but the ‘Phir Zindagi’ director and producer Parvati Balgopan disagrees and maintains that she would not like to take the legal action against Vikas as it would look like a publicity stunt. “Because Queen is successful, we may not be able to release our film. The characters are different, but the premise is exactly same,” she adds. “What hurts more is Vikas had seen the film. Had he not seen it, we would have thought that the similarities were only a coincidence,” she said. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 17^th, 2014.

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