Officially announced past weekend as India's official entry for the 2018 Oscars, 'Newton' got nominated for the foreign language film category. While some avid haters on such a sublime success of the film claim that the movie has been inspired from a 2001 Iranian film 'Secret Ballot'. However, the Producer of the film Marco Mueller feels that there was not even a hint of plagiarisation.
On Monday night filmmaker Anurag Kashyap shared Secret Ballot producer's thought through his Facebook post that stated Muller's unbiased opinion after watching Newton. "A pretty decent film, definitely no rip off from our Secret Ballot (even if the general concept is the same)" and then I asked him if I can share his response on social media? He replied,"Please feel free as you see fit, there is not even a hint of plagiarisation."
The 45-year-old director also shared the screenshot of his conversation with Mueller. Favouring the movie 'Newton' Kashyap tweeted,"Newton' is as much a copy of 'Secret Ballot' as 'The Avengers' is of 'Watan Ke Rakhwale" Produced by Manish Mundra of Drishyam Films, the film was world premiered at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, where it even won an award. Newton also won the Best film award at the Hong Kong International Film festival 2017. Moreover, it also got officially selected in the Tribeca International Festival 2017.
Thrashing every rumours Kashyap said, "Newton' is an award winner from Berlin fest and I can promise you those curators watch more films in a year than rest of us do in a lifetime." Newton Director Amit.V. Masurkar had his stand on the controversy by saying, "The story was born from my heart. I had no idea about 'Secret Ballot'." Meanwhile, meeting the film team's expectations, Newton is released in India as on September 22, 2017.
It looks like word of mouth and Oscar nomination buzz has done magic for the film. Trade analyst Taran Adarsh tweeted on Sunday, "Newton' shows remarkable 162.5 percent growth on Saturday. Friday Rs 96 lakh, Saturday Rs 2.52 crore. Total: Rs 3.48 crore India biz."