Director Jananathan has accused Sanjay Leela Bhansali of plagiarizing his National Award-winning film Iyarkkai for the movie Saawariya.
Jananathan, one of the distinctive directors in Tamil industry, has alleged that director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Saawariya' is nothing but a movie copied from his 'Iyarkkai'.
According to Jananthan, a few years ago, Bollywood producer Bokadia had evinced interest in remaking the movie in Hindi with Salman Khan in the lead role and took a print from him. 'Till date, I have not received the print'', says the director.
Jananathan, of course, agrees that his film was an adoption of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classical fiction White Nights. 'But I had made many changes in my script to suit the Tamil audience, while Sanjay Leela Bhansali has straight away lifted my script', claims Jananathan.
'Iyarkai', which was released three years back fetched Jananthan national award. 'Saawariya', which hit the screens recently, has been receiving poor responses from both critics and the audiences.