More often than not, such things happen all the time in Bollywood, be it music or story line or even scenes; some call it INSPIRATION and some COPY. Well Vikas Bhal’s Queen is apparently a COPY of Abhigyan Jha’s Phir Zindagi, well that’s what Abhigyan has to say.
Abhigyan Jha wrote the story based on which director Parvati Balagopalan made Phir Zindagi. The film starred Milind Soman and Gul Panag in the lead roles and its seems that his story had exactly the same premise; a woman decides to go on her honeymoon, all by herself, and learns to live life on her own terms in the process.
However Vikas Bhal who is basking on the glory of his super hit film Queen does not feel the same.
According to Abhigyan, Phir Zindagi was shown to Vikas Bahl at his residence way back in in 2006 and 2010, when Vikas was heading UTV Spotboy. In fact, Abhigyan Jha claims that Vikas Bhal’s wife too was present when Parvati Balagopalan showed him the film.
On one hand Abhigyan accepts that the treatment of Queen is very different from his film but on the other feels that the story line of Queen is more or less the same.
Abhigyan says that there are several sequences in Queen that have been lifted from Phir Zindagi. “Sequences such as the hero coming back to the girl when she has undergone change, their breaking up at a coffee shop and several other crucial sequences are exact copies,” says an angry Abhigyan.
However Parvati Balagopalan maintains that she would not like to take the legal action against Vikas Bhal 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. 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.” stated a visibly upset Parvati.
Abhigyan Jha, is certainly thinking of taking some action, though there is no clarity as we file this report.
