Sidharth Malhotra, Anushka Sharma in ‘Priceless’ remake

The rights of European hits ‘Love Me If You Dare’, ‘The Intouchables’ and ‘Priceless’ have also been signed, sealed and delivered for a Bollywood makeover. The latest buzz is that Dostana director Tarun Mansukhani has tapped Sidharth Malhotra and Anushka Sharma for the Priceless remake. Lionsgate and Endemol India have announced a co-production of the Hindi version of the 2011 sports drama Warrior, which starred Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton.

Rohan Sippy, the director of Nautanki Saala!, which was the remake of French comedy Après Vous, feels that the reason Bollywood veered towards unofficial remakes chiefly because there were no means to acquire the rights. “Now the option exists. With increasing interaction with the outside world, there are more resources powered by the assumption of us being more corporate has driven our business into a more professional space,” he says.

Not only that, most of the Hollywood studios are actively taking part in making movies for the Indian audience. To a great extent, the entry of foreign studios such as Disney, Fox and Warner Brothers in India has helped to bring this renaissance in Indian filmmaking process. Now, buying rights is not so difficult. Big studios with a huge legacy of successful films also bring along a bank, so content sharing gets a boost.

“This is a major change from the time when there wasn’t really an option of buying. We are talking about a time when internet or other means of communication were not so evolved. Even if someone wanted to buy the rights, they hardly knew how to go about it. Now when studios approach a director to work with them, they also offer their bank of films,” says Rajat Arora, writer of The Dirty Picture.

Disney India currently has the remakes of You Again, Love Me If You Dare and the Korean hit My Girlfriend is An Agent, among others, at different stages of development. “International studios and the access to all their films have really changed the game. We ourselves get the rights and make the necessary moves. Now studios make the same film in different languages,” says Amar Butala, creative director,
Studios–Disney India.

Over the years, India has grown into an attractive market not only for products and services of daily consumption but also entertainment. If earlier, Hollywood movies would get released a few weeks after their releases in the US, today they are releasing on the same day. Similar is the trend even with TV serials and shows. At the same time, we are seeing a reverse trend where Indian movies are getting an exposure abroad.

Due to an ever-expanding diaspora, Indian films are increasing their market strength in international circuits. The huge international success of The Lunchbox is an indicator of things to come. Our films getting a wider audience also means that it’s becoming quite easy for the original filmmakers to identify movies that are “lifted”. The chances of getting sued for plagiarism are therefore quite high now.

Add to this, that a lot of Hollywood studios are active in India and thus have access to a lot more information and knowledge about the Indian film industry makes it even more difficult to continue this practice. “I personally believe that circumstances have forced Indian filmmakers to buy rights and remake a film rather than just copy it and its not change in mindset that has set this trend,” says Nikhil Rangnekar, CEO – SA1, Spatial Access.

As more hushed voices point out, coming out of the much derided plagiarised world hasn’t been easy for Hindi filmmakers. Though it was easy before the digital age, some of the recent films didn’t even get to see the light of the day because plagiarism charge proved too costly for them. In 2009, the Bombay High Court stayed the release of BR Films’ Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai starring Govinda, Tabu and Lara Dutta, when 20th Century Fox alleged it to be a remake of their 1992 Oscar Award-winning film My Cousin Vinny.

In the same year, 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 his version of it. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment threatened a $30 million lawsuit against David Dhawan’s Partner owing to its similarities with Hitch.

While the conversation on originality may lead to another debate altogether, there lies a huge gap between inspired and plagiarised. Case in example, Hum Tum, that was loosely inspired from Hollywood hit When Harry Met Sally. When Kunal Kohli, the director of the film approached the makers, they told him that Hum Tum wasn’t a remake. “For a remake, it has to be 60-70 per cent similar. When buying rights wasn’t really an idea here, we were offering to pay them money for the inspiration, but they told us that we don’t need to take permission,” says Kohli.

But everyone is not so lucky. There is a constant fear that the original works that are being pitched around might not be wholly original. How does one ensure that? Kassim Jagmagia, story co-developer of Dil Chahta Hai and head of script development, Excel Entertainment, who receives hundreds of scripts every month, has a stringent process in place. “We do try and research about the story line of a script that we have liked and want to purchase, but one does not rule out the possibility in the future where we might not be aware that the script we are purchasing is similar to a Hollywood film and therefore we have a stringent contract that we sign with the writer where we mention that the work purchased is entirely an original work of the writer. We also have a research team that scrutinises the script for any similarity, and we make sure that script is registered by Film Writers Association and try to copyright it after it’s purchased. Of course the process is long but one gets an NOC in a few months,” says Jagmagia.

Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha credits this change to a combination of both changes in mindset as well as the fear of being caught. “I think it’s a bit of both. Now we are more organised, monies have become cleaner, excel sheets have invaded the production space, and there’s a complete cultural difference that is going on now,” says Sinha who produced Warning, a remake of Open Water 2: Adrift.

But to the larger mass of India flocking to theaters escaping the harsh realities of daily life, plagiarism is not really an issue. “The mass of this country may not be really interested in English and foreign language films. For them, it is whether they have got their money’s worth or not. It doesn’t matter to them whether this has been remade from a foreign film or not. And if you really look back, some films you later realised were taken from foreign films don’t affect your enjoyment,” adds Sippy.