Anurag Kashyap's Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai, which stars Saiyami Kher and Roshan Mathew, will release on June 5. On May 19, Netflix released the first look and release date of the suspense drama. In the film, Saiyami stars as Sarita Pillai and Roshan will be seen as Sushant Pillai.
However, director Wilson Louis underwent a shock when he saw the trailer of Anurag's film and found in uncannily similar to his short film titled Choke. While the Saiyami starrer revolves around a housewife who finds money flowing out of her kitchen pipe, Wilson's film starring Seema Biswas tells the story of a BMC officer who hides gold in a choked pipe of his building. On Friday, Wilson highlighted the similarities between the two stories in a Facebook post. "Hansal Mehta, whom I have worked with in the past, reached out to me after reading my post. He had seen Anurag's film and was sure it's an original concept. By then, I had contacted Monika Shergill [VP, content, Netflix] who was taken aback by the similarities," Wilson told a leading daily.
Meanwhile, Anurag himself contacted Wilson to discuss the matter and during the chat, the former informed him that writer Nihit Bhave had registered his script with Screen Writers' Association as early as June 2013. "I never accused Anurag of stealing [my idea]. But, let's admit that we live in an industry where ideas are often passed around. Writers don't feel secure about their material, and creators don't have the integrity to credit the original writers. In such a scenario, you assume the worst in everyone. After the conversation, we agreed that both films have an uncanny resemblance as far as the idea is concerned," he said, adding, "I am not pressing charges of plagiarism. However, after consulting my team and lawyer, I want to put forth the fact that we created the film first and released its promo a year ago."
Choked writer Nihit too confirmed to the daily that he had developed the story in 2013 with Choked as the title. "I have years' worth of correspondence on e-mail as I shared the script with multiple producers. Once Anurag decided to helm it, we developed it together over five years and tweaked it to include demonetisation. Wilson and Anurag have agreed that there is no similarity between the two films, apart from the title and [the plot point of] the pipe. Also, since my script was registered four years before his, shouldn't I be the one worrying about similarities?" he signed off by saying.
(Source: Mid-Day)
