WHAT?! Is Newton inspired by Secret Ballot?

In the past two days, Rajkummar Rao’s Newton has attracted all kinds of news, the good, bad and then the ugly. The good news is that the film will be India’s official entry to the Oscars for next year. The bad is that within 24 hours of its release, High Definition leaked copies of Newton are freely available for others to download and watch. But just a few hours ago, an ugly news just came up.

Newton, as it turns out, is apparently also a faithful, but an unofficial remake an Iranian film from 2001, Secret Ballot. We will not really bore you with the similarities and the differences, but the plot is available on sites like IMDb and Wikipedia for you all to see.

Speaking about the same, when a news portal contacted the writer of the film, Amit Masurkar, to know his stand, he said, “I remember after I wrote the script just before I was going to shoot, a friend told me about Secret Ballot. Since the film was on YouTube I watched bits and pieces but that was very different I felt. A lady polling officer goes door to door. Also, there is some kind of romantic track which is not in Newton.”

Adding to this, he said, “I knew someday people will draw similarities but what can one do? When you write a story there is a possibility that someone else must have written a similar story somewhere in the world.”

Well, guess that’s a fair stand to take. But, the two films are WAY TOO similar to each other to call it a coincidence.

Let’s see what the other makers of the film have to say about this.