On 30 April, a day before the release of 'Malayalee From India', Nishad Koya posted about his script — 'Indo-Pak'.
Nishad Koya alleges plagiarism by the makers of 'Malayalee From India'. (Supplied)
A day before its release, Malayalee From India — considered the comeback movie of Nivin Pauly after his consecutive flops, was embroiled in a controversy.
Malayalam scriptwriter Nishad Koya alleged plagiarism by the makers of Malayalee From India.
The film is about a Malayali named Aalparambil Gopi (Nivin Pauly), who is forced to leave India due to some unforeseen events in his village.
Directed by Dijo Jose Antony and produced by Listin Stephen under his own banner Magic Frames, the film received a good response.
Nivin Pauly and Dhyan Sreenivasan were praised for delivering fine performances.
The flick is also doing good business at the global box office. As per the Sacnilk tracking website, it grossed over ₹12.65 crore worldwide and a net of ₹8.02 crore in India.
On 30 April, a day before the release of Malayalee From India, senior scriptwriter Nishad Koya posted about his script, which he named “Indo-Pak“.
In the post, Nishad said his story is similar to the plot of a movie being released on 1 May. However, he deleted the post reportedly after facing pressure from the Film Employees’ Federation of Kerala (FEFKA) and the Kerala Film Producers’ Association (KFPA).
Nevertheless, during a promotional interview with a YouTube channel named The Cue Studio, producer Listin Stephen, director Dijo Jose Antony, and actor Nivin Pauly denied the allegations made by Nishad Koya.
Listin pointed out that Nishad putting up a Facebook post, a day before the release of their film, was unprofessional and not expected from the senior scriptwriter.
Nivin Pauly felt that Nishad Koya could have spoken to Listin Stephen or should have sought the help of film associations instead of expressing his ire on social media. He also termed Nishad “unprofessional”.
Meanwhile, Dijo Jose Antony clarified that nobody contacted him regarding the issue.
Screenshot of the Facebook post of Nishad Koya. (Supplied)
The rift got deeper when Nishad Koya, in another interview with the same YouTube channel, claimed that he did contact Dijo and alert him about the similarities regarding the story over a year ago.
The scriptwriter also claimed he had the WhatsApp chat between him and Dijo. He even submitted copies of their chat.
He said he announced a project (with Indo-Pak script) in 2021 with Jayasurya and Nawazuddin Siddiqui under the direction of Joshiy.
However, the movie didn’t materialise due to some reason.
“Jayasurya later shared the story (of Indo-Pak) with Dijo Jose. I briefed the script to Dijo after Jayasurya asked me to. But Dijo didn’t like it and rejected the story,” the writer claimed.
Further, Nishad explained that he later approached Prithviraj Sukumaran with the same script while the actor was working on Salaar: Part 1-Ceasefire (2023).
However, in a shocking turn of events, Prithviraj told him that Dijo was doing a similar story with Nivin Pauly.
Script of Nishad Koya named ‘Indo-Pak’. (Supplied)
On knowing this, Nishad said he sent a voice message to Dijo on WhatsApp asking if the story was the same.
“Dijo told me that the movie is entirely different with a comedy angle, except for the India-Pakistan angle,” he recalled.
However, when the teaser of Malayalee From India was launched two days before its theatrical release, Nishad realised that the story was almost the same.
This prompted him to put up a post on his Facebook handle.
The scriptwriter pointed out that the promotional teaser released a few months ago gave a perception that the film was a comedy entertainer.
“However, the team shot the film secretively so the story wouldn’t be known to others,” he alleged.
However, the makers of the movie are yet to respond to Nishad Koya’s latest revelations in the plagiarism row.
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