Same Same But Different!

Bollywood has a penchant for repeating topics and the Indian audience never had a problem with that. Even though there is no lack of good scriptwriters in the film industry but the same story (or similar topics) has often been created on screen more than once.

For instance, Devdas (1955 film starring Dilp Kumar) and Devdas (2002 film starring Shah Rukh Khan) or perhaps The Legend of Bhagat Singh (starring Ajay Devgn) and 23rd March 1931: Shaheed (starring Bobby Deol), both of which even released on the same date 7th June 2002!

What we have noticed of late is that several films are being made either on a similar topic or using the same backdrop to set the story. If you are curious to know which are the films, here is the list:

Padman and Phullu

Sanitary napkins are definitely the most trending topic of Bollywood in 2017. While we are eagerly waiting for Akshay Kumar’s Padman to hit theatres, which is scheduled to release in 2018, meanwhile Phullu released.

Sharib Hashmi starrer Phullu deals with the story of a village man who tries to make cheap sanitary napkins for the women of his village who stick to the age-old method of using cloth and suffer from infection. While Phullu makes hand-made sanitary pads but he cannot succeed in making the village women use the same due to lack of cooperation from them.

Akshay Kumar starrer Padman is inspired by the true story of Tamil Nadu based entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham who made cheap, affordable sanitary napkins for the women in his village. The Padma Shri (2016) recipient has invented low-cost sanitary pad making machine to manufacture sanitary pads in large amount.

Baadshaho and Indu Sarkar

Apparently, there is no similarity between the stories of the two movies yet there is a huge similarity. Both the films have used the 1975 emergency as the backdrop!

From what we could gather from the trailer, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar talks about how the common man’s life was affected during the emergency and how a housewife (Kirti Kulhari) decides to ‘fight the system’.

Ajay Devgn starrer Baadshaho is the story of a gang of robbers trying to loot the gold reserve, which is being transported from one city to another during the period of emergency. Within 96 hours, a truck full of gold will have to safely cover 600 kilometres to reach its destination which the six badasses are planning to loot.

Haseena and Daddy

There are absolutely no similarities between these two films barring the fact that both are biopics based on the lives of people who had connections with the underworld.

While Arjun Rampal’s Daddy is inspired by the life of gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli, Shraddha Kapoor starrer Haseena Parkar is based on the life of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Haseena Parkar.