It has not even two days since the trailer for the upcoming Film Hichki was released, and it has already garnered a couple of controversies. The movie starring Rani Mukerji in the lead role is slated to release on February 23. A minor backlash the trailer faced was the fact that the plot of the film seemed oddly similar to the Hollywood made-for-TV movie Front of the Class. But soon, Yash Raj Films clarified with a statement that both the movies are based on the same book, hence the similarities. But another controversy soon gained mileage on Twitter. Writer Nishant Kaushik claimed that he was brought on board to pen the story, which he did. In a long thread of tweets, he alleged that no communication was made by Sidharth P Malhotra regarding the development for two and a half years. He was appalled and hurt upon coming across the trailer of Hichki.

While Nishant is raising a voice to get his Credit, director Sidharth has issued a statement calling his claims baseless. Here is what his official statement reads:

“I had acquired the rights to make Front of the Class as a Hindi motion picture in 2013. Nishant Kaushik’s claims are baseless. He was contacted through Exceed Entertainment and I haven’t even met him once. We were looking for writers who could come up with a take on the Front of the Class. We had approached several writers including Nishant. He was given a brief for the film and the story and slant he came up with, was not what we were looking for. So, we did not proceed with him and Exceed was informed about my decision immediately. This was, 2015. Several prominent writers like Amole Gupte, Abbas Tyrewala have worked on the story of Hichki and we have obtained NOC’s from them and I thank each one of them for being the creative contributors of Hichki. We have credited all the writers who have worked in our film. So, it is ridiculous that we will not give credit to anyone in particular who has worked hard and contributed for Hichki.”

We will have to wait for Hichki to release to hear from both the parties regarding whether or not Nishant’s work has been incorporated in the film and if he is credited or not. It would be too soon to speak about this credit row.

This won’t be the first time a fight over writing credit has made headlines in the B-Town. Earlier in the year, Simran went through a row over writing credits.