Hirani finally breaks his silence, Bhagat paints the blog RED again !

Bollywood Buzz, Broadband | DestinyKuri | January 5, 2010 at 5:03 pm

raj-kumar-hirani After Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Raj Kumar Hirani finally breaks his silence upon the on going controversy between Vinod Chopra Films and Chetan Bhagat regarding the movie ‘3 Idiots’. Chetan Bhagat claims he should get the credit for the story as the movie is inspired from his book Five Point Someone (FPS). While Aamir Khan, Hirani and team claims the movie is only 5-10% based upon Chetan’s book and they had already bought the rights to adapt the book into movie long before. In the following video Rajkumar Hirani tries to prove all the allegations made by Chetan Bhagat in his blog were just lies. Hirani uses some of Chetan’s previous interview clips to counter attack Chetan’s claims.

After this video came online, Chetan Bhagat writes in his blog

Once again, thank you so much for your support. Yesterday, I was on CNN-IBN’s Face the Nation, on a general panel discussion on the Education System. However, I used the opportunity to give a few closing remarks from my side on the issue. While we maintain our stance on the issue, me and my fans want to move on, and we have.

05-chetan-bhagat-311209 He also added “While totally not obligated to answer any more allegations, just to clarify on the Raj Kumar Hirani, no I wasn’t given the script. A top level oral narration is something else and anybody in the film industry will tell you is very different from actually giving the written script. Notice they keep saying he has ‘heard’ the script, not ‘read’ it. In the oral narration, they told me the changes only. Please also note NDA he flashes which has a date of Oct 3, 2007, the so-called narration date. The adaptation deal was done in September 2005. Raju said it took Abhijat ‘3 yrs and 2 months’ to do the script in other interviews.”

Chetan adds “Hence, even if Abhijat started on the deal date, the script was finished in November 2008. So, how could RH narrate it to me in Oct 2007? Go figure. Also, please listen to my full Bollywood Hungama interview they are quoting from, I maintain that my story is the base. Anyway, what matters is the final film vs book. Also, they did not buy rights of the book – they bought the rights to adapt the book – a basic error they continue to make – whether out of lack of knowledge or to evade the issue. And yes there is a contract to adapt the work – but it doesn’t mean they can claim authorship of the story. You can buy a painting, not claim you painted it – basic copyright law. My points are valid, and I am not a liar.”

He concludes by saying “Anyway, like I said, we’ve moved on.”It remains to be seen if Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Raj Kumar Hirani also move on with their respective business.