Its not Unknown anymore! In this era of social networking, how do you expect to steal and run away. Acid Factory is directed by Suparn Verma and produced by Sanjay Gupta. Earlier we wrote about the Acid-Factory-Unknown plagiarism issue here. They set a new benchmark by even copying the trailer of the film!
Dear Guptaji and Vermaji,
Havent you heard “kanoon ke haath bahut lambe hote hain”. Its time to shut the dvd shop! Cntrl C + Cntrl V is getting too risky. Learn the other commands soon!
According to reports in international press, Simon Brand, the director of Unknown has got to know about the film Acid Factory, has seen the trailer and now is planning to take the matter to court and sue the makers of the film. You can read the reports here and here.
The reports are in French/Spanish, and if you are too lazy to do the translation, we have done it. But since its google translation, you might have to jumble few words here and there.
Director desolate with the copy that Indian industry has its ‘Unknown’, ‘Acid Factory’ is bet of the year.
You can change the actors, the title – by Unknown (Hollywood, 2006) for Acid Factory (Bollywood, 2009) – are still shots and sequences and a slight film draws up another success. The director of Strangers (in Portugal) is inconsolado with a new episode of shameless plagiarism of the Indian industry.
“I was in shock,” said the Colombian director Simon Brand. “It took me a while to assimilate it, especially after seeing the trailer on the Indian tape. I found a copy that is identical to the point of stealing plans and entire sequences,” he said, desolate, the filmmaker. In 2006, in a discreet, left the film that told the story of five men who are in a factory without knowing who they are. This thriller is starring, among others, James Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano and Greg Kinnear.
Three years later, the streets of major cities in India are filled with posters for a big Bollywood production – a budget five times that of Unkown. Five men are in a factory without knowing who they are … The movie is signed by Sanjay Gupta, who perhaps should think three times before going through Hollywood – accuse him of, among the 13 films he has done, have made plagiarism by 95%.
The story is not new and even classics (Godfather, etc. ..) have been “adopted” by Bollywood, who does not pay a penny for the rights. “After the initial run, it is difficult to prosecute them,” says Brand. Acid Factory debuted there 15 days.
The other report has more details, including the director’s plan to sue the makers of Acid Factory….
In the United States has struggled to get into theaters, but in India is the big bombshell of the season. The streets of large cities have been papered indas for weeks with the announcement of the release of the film, while Hollywood was just one more. The American version is called ‘Unknown’ (2006). The Indian, ‘Acid Factory’. But this is not the story of a comparison, nor a remake, but of a plagiarism by any measure.
Simon Brand, director of the Colombian original version released in Spain under the title ‘blank mind’ with James Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano and Greg Kinnear as protagonistas’-heard the case a few weeks ago in Los Angeles, where he lives five years. It was told by her producer or his agent, but an Indian journalist who called him to interview him about it.
‘I was shocked,’ admits Brand. ‘It took me a while to assimilate, especially after seeing the trailer for the film in India. I found that is an identical copy to the point that they have stolen entire flat and take ‘.
And do not lie. It is true that the plot is the same-five men wake up locked in a factory, and none of them remember how they got there or who they are-but with Indian actors, produced by one of the directors of the highest reputation in his country, Sanjay Gupta, and the title changed to make it more attractive.
Then, according to criticism from several local media, the thriller is a chain of sequences copied frame by frame, of the Colombian film director. Some go further, asserting that the 13 films directed, written or produced by Gupta, 95 percent are exact copies of Hollywood titles or Korean films.
It seems that not alone and that plagiarism in Bollywood is already part of the culture of the industry. Crushing machine by the intellectual property rights have come films like ‘The Godfather’, ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, ‘My friend the ghost’, ‘Sabrina’, ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’, ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers ‘,’ The Fugitive ‘and’ Sleeping with the enemy ‘, to name a few of an endless list of titles of current and classic cinema.
But nobody could stop them. Even 20th Century Fox, which in May this year filed a lawsuit against the film by BR Films ‘Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai’, arguing that it is an exact copy of ‘My Cousin Vinny’, starring Danny de Vito and Marisa Tomei.
‘Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors’
Even Harry Potter has been victim of Indian intellectual property theft. ‘Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors’ is the Indian version of the character of JK Rowling, but so far have escaped any sanction despite the demand for Warner.
Now, two weeks after the release in India of ‘Acid Factory’, Simon Brand is expecting that the lawyers for the distributor of ‘Unknown’ in Asia to take action on the matter, while acknowledging that it will be difficult.
‘I talked to industry insiders familiar with the matter and tell me that when the film has already opened in the United States sue for plagiarism is complicated because it is a common practice in India’, says Brand, who claims to feel a ‘huge powerlessness and frustration “to see how he copied their work without receiving any reward for it. And that the Indian film was shot with four or five times more than his budget.
It has a director with his second film, ‘Paraiso Travel’, managed to beat all box office brands in Colombia last year and be compared with ‘Amores Perros’ and ‘City of God’. “The problem is that piracy was and is unstoppable, has Brand, who, despite everything, he dreams of making films of high power in India someday.
As Dhoni says in the Aircel tvc “Aur bolo” !
F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b 
