Vikramaditya Motwane lashes out at ALTBalaji, accuses them of plagiarism
Vikramaditya Motwane called out Balaji Telefilms' streaming service ALTBalaji for plagiarism, after they released the poster of their new show, His Storyy on social media. The poster bore uncanny similarities with the poster of Sudhanshu Saria's short film LOEV. Saria had first pointed it out on Twitter but ALTBalaji issued an apology on Sunday morning about the "oversight" only after Motwane posted about it.
Motwane had slammed Balaji for not owning up
Motwane termed the decision to not "acknowledge your folly" and keeping the contested poster on display despite the protest as shameful. "It's like the intern at @altbalaji googled 'Indian same sex film' and decided to rip off the first poster they found. I say intern because I cannot believe that a working professional in the industry would have the lack of integrity," he wrote.
Saria had first tweeted about the ripping off
Balaji has a HisStoryy of doing this, said Motwane
The director also alleged that the show was probably a rip-off of the Taiwanese show about a gay-couple named His Story. He further slammed Balaji in a series of Instagram Stories and insinuated that they have a history of plagiarism. He cited the example of a poster from Judgmentall Hai Kya, which was eerily similar to an artwork done by Hungarian artist, Flora Borsi.
The team was also called out for deleting user comments
Balaji Telefilms, owned by Ekta Kapoor, was also criticized by the Udaan director for deleting comments on the post by users who pointed out the plagiarism. He wrote, "This is not at all. @altbalaji continues to proudly display the poster in their Insta feed, AND are deleting comments on the post that are calling them out. This is a s**t show, Balaji. (sic)"
ALTBalaji issued an apology; took down the post
Soon after the scathing attack by Motwane, the production house issued an apology and took down the poster from their social media accounts. Before that, they had maintained that "due diligence" was on. "The uncanny resemblance and similarity cannot be written off as a mere coincidence. It has been an oversight on part of our design team. For this, we apologize," a part read.
We have deleted the poster from all our platforms: ALTBalaji
Furthering the apology, ALTBalaji wrote, "An apology to the artists involved in the making of this poster is warranted. We have deleted the poster from all our platforms and we humbly apologize to the artists involved in the creation of the beautiful poster of LOEV."