MUMBAI: Deepika Padukone’s new Levi's ad has run into a major controversy after it was claimed that the backdrop and the set of the ad in question, was identical to the one in Sooni Taraporevala’s ‘Yeh Ballet’.
The production designer for the advertisement Rupin Suchak has admitted it to be the case.
Rupin claims that he was told by the Levi's ad director Nadia Marquard Otzen to make it that way. He writes, “Yes we did :) in fact that’s what our director wanted so we had to recreate that”.
Sooni, however, isn't amused. She lashed out against the ad saying that this kind of plagiarism is nothing but intellectual theft. "A couple days ago someone brought this @levis_in ad to my attention. I was shocked to see our Yeh Ballet dance studio set in this ad, because it was conceptualized & created out of a derelict space by @shalzoid (our PD) from scratch and dismantled after our shoot. Basically @nadiaeye (the director of this ad) saw Yeh Ballet and decided to plagiarize our set down to the very last detail (swipe for screenshot). Would Levi’s and the director ever think of doing that in the west without permission / acknowledgment, and pasing it off as their own creative work? This is not homage this is intellectual theft! It’s SO unfair to our wonderful production designer @shalzoid to have her work ripped off like that," she lashed out on Instagram.
"It is a sad state of affairs that intellectual rights in Indian cinema, TV and modelling industry are not protected,” agrees a source.
Yeh Ballet streams on Netflix and has received acclaim for its intriguing storyline. It is produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur.
Credits: Times Of India
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