Vishnu team alleges plagiarism

Close on the heels of French filmmaker Jerome Salle’s allegations that recent Telugu film ‘Agnyaathavasi,’ was a rip-off of his film ‘Largo Winch,’, young director Karthik Reddy alleges that the first poster of Vijay Devarakonda’s new film ‘NOTA’ is a rip-off of the first look of his upcoming film ‘Voter,’ featuring Vishnu Manchu in the lead.

“We were baffled when we saw the poster of Vijay Devarakonda’s new film, wherein, he displays a finger with a voting ink mark which is shockingly similar to the first look of our big-ticket film ‘Voter’ released a few months ago. Hence, we don’t rule out a copy-cat act,” he charges.

“We are worried that the Tamil filmmakers won’t rip-off our story as well. I wrote this story depicting the power of a voter (read common man) in a democracy but seldom gets respect that he deserves, almost a year ago and began making the film with leading star Vishnu Manchu for last seven to eight months. Hope they are not inspired by our story, which will be unfortunate for them.

While we are releasing our film on May 11, they have just began. Like our film, their film is also a Telugu-Tamil bilingual, adding to our woes,” laments Karthik, who wants to bring back the spotlight on the voter, who is a forgotten species for politicians until elections. “Our story is about a voter who takes on the might of powers-that-be and manages to show powerful politicians their place,’’ he concludes.

Surabhi plays the female lead and the big budget film is being produced by Sudhir Kumar.
However, for Vishnu, it is his first political thriller, while his father and seasoned actor Mohan Babu did a political spoof ‘Assembly Rowdy’ in the 1990s.