All Chetan Bhagat fans felt hurt when the renowned writer wasn’t duly credited by Raj Kumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra for the blockbuster movie 3 Idiots. Chetan has finally broken his silence in the issue in his personal blog and hit out at the 3 Idiots team which claimed that the movie was ‘loosely’ based on the book Five Point Someone. Although people who have read the book found 3 Idiots as its screen adaptation, the director, producer and the stars have shied away from crediting Bhagat for the movie.
An upset Bhagat added “ I, frankly, was shocked to see this. This is because I was also fed ‘this is an original movie’ line a lot. I wanted to see the final script – it was never shown to me. I wanted to see the film before release – it was not shown to me (even though trials had been done for people). What’s more, the makers had called me to their office and pressured me several times to withdraw my ‘Based on a novel by’ credit, which was by contract. They told me they’d replace it with something like ‘initiated by’ – a credit that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. I still told them that if the film is indeed original, I’ll happily withdraw the credit, but somehow the promos don’t tell me so. I asked them to show me the film and they fell silent”
“The plot line was same – people meet at ragging, the first class with definition of machine, the friends separate, Alok (Raju) moves with Venkat (Chatur), Ryan (Rancho) helps Alok’s father, Alok rejoins group etc etc. From Alok (Raju) jumping to stealing the papers and calling out from Cherian (Virus’) office – the book came alive on screen. I was surprised and happy that FPS has made it in such a grand way. However, my family had not spotted my credit in the beginning (there was none) and they were feeling let down. A screenplay associate credit to VVC had a prominent upfront placement. The story credit was not shared with me. And yes, all the office talk of a ‘king treated like king’ was a white lie”
Raj Kumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Aamir Khan will have to do a lot of answering on the issue.
