ALTBalaji apologises over poster plagiarism accusations

ALTBalaji, Ekta Kapoor’s streaming service, released an apology in response to plagiarism charges made by award-winning filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria. Saria said in a Twitter thread that ALTBalaji ‘blatantly ripped off the artwork for their show His Story from the poster of his film Loev. Since removing the poster from their social media accounts, the streaming site sent a statement saying, “The eerie likeness and similarities cannot be dismissed as coincidental. It was a mistake on the part of our design team. We sincerely apologize.”

Production house further added “We admire each designer’s imagination and will never deliberately steal or dismiss their art. As a result, an apology is due to the artists who contributed to the development of this poster “According to the announcement. They also mentioned that the poster has been removed from all sites.

Vikramaditya Motwane shared Instagram trenchant stories

Motwane slammed the Balaji team in a series of Instagram stories late Saturday evening, saying it was disgusting that instead of apologizing for the “folly,” the production house proceeded to showcase the disputed artwork on its social accounts.

“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 to hahaha hahaha who the f**k am I kidding! Interns are a thousand times better. Also, Balaji has a HisStoryy of doing this,” wrote Motwane, who in the past has directed Ekta Kapoor-backed Lootera.

The AK vs AK director then posted an Instagram story with a look at the 2019 release of Judgementall Hai Kya by Kangana Ranaut and an interestingly related piece of art made by Hungarian artist Flora Borsi. She had also accused the filmmakers of plagiarising her work.