Trouble for Archie ‘rip-off’

It’s a movie about youth and fun times, but it’s certainly not having fun. Even before its shooting is wrapped up, film-maker Amit Chauhan’s Boyss To Boyss Hain has run into trouble for being reportedly inspired by the popular Archie Comics.

It’s a movie about youth and fun times, but it’s certainly not having fun. Even before its shooting is wrapped up, film-maker Amit Chauhan’s Boyss To Boyss Hain has run into trouble for being reportedly inspired by the popular Archie Comics. The comic book giant’s head office in New York has served a legal notice to the movie’s producers, Anup Jalota and Chaitannyaswami, and threatened that the film team would have to pay them R7-8 crore if found guilty of plagiarism. A copy of the notice is with HT City.

HT Image

“We have received a legal notice from Archie. They read in the media that our film is inspired by the comic series. They feel that all characters are inspired, and that we have only changed Riverdale to Delhi University. We have replied to the notice, clarifying that the film is definitely not a copy, and that we’d be happy to show it to them,” says Vikramaditya Narayan, the film’s project director. Producer Chaitannyaswami says, “Our film is about youngsters and their colourful life. We never made any statement, which suggested that the film is inspired from Archie comics. One of my actors may have said in an interview that the film has a feel similar to Archie, but never that the film is based on it.”

However, officials from Archie plan to rest only after watching the movie in Mumbai later this month.