This story is from August 6, 2007

It’s bought over, not plagiarised!

TNN / Aug 6, 2007, 00:00 IST

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Ravi Chopra, who has just released a colour version of his father B R Chopra’s 1957 classic Naya Daur, starts shooting his new venture with Govinda and Lara Dutta this month.

Govinda to do My Cousin Vinny remake.
When Govinda played a lying lawyer forced to tell the truth in David Dhawan’s Kyunki Main Jhooth Nahin Bolta, there was no question of copyright infringement.
David just went ahead and remade the Jim Carrey comedy Liar Liar- just like David and Govinda again lately collaborated on the smash hit Partner which is a raunchy ripoff of the Will Smith-starrer Hitch.
But now filmmakers are waking up to the importance of copyright laws.

Ravi Chopra, who has just released a colour version of his father B R Chopra’s 1957 classic Naya Daur, starts shooting his new venture with Govinda and Lara Dutta this month.
"Though it’s loosely inspired by the Hollywood film My Cousin Vinny (a 1992 comedy directed by Jonathan Lynn featuring Joe Pesci as a struggling lawyer fighting to free his cousin), we’ve acquired copyrights for the remake. If we’re making a film about the prevalence of the legal system and how the wronged can be subjected to untold harassment if the right legal advice isn’t provided to them, then it is only right that we do the legally correct thing by buying the original’s right," reasoned Ravi whose B R Films is no stranger to films about the legal system.

In 1960, B R Chopra had a made the songless drama Kanoon about the loopholes in our judiciary. "A Govinda film cannot be songless. It’s an out-and-out comedy. But with a pungent justice-delayed-justice-denied message under the fun veneer," said Ravi.
This startling move to beat Bollywood’s notorious reputation for plagiarism is in direct contrast to the daring practice that’s been going on for decades.
Even the Chopras had appropriated the sensational rape saga Lipstick into the Hindi hit Insaaf Ka Tarazu in 1980 without bothering about copyright laws.
Now even when Karan Johar uses a part of an American song like Pretty Woman in Kal Ho Na Ho, he makes sure money goes into the proper hands.

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