Sameer Sadhwani, Kishore Sadhwani and Pankaj Chaturvedi

DNA (February 22, 2019)

With Sameer and Kishore Sadhwani, the makers of the short film Laddoo, giving credit to original writer Pankaj Chaturvedi, the controversy around it has come to an end. The two makers have stated that they met Pankaj in 2013 when he had shared the script of the story with them. They recently made the film and released it on January 31. Due to the time gap and lack of communication between Kishore-Sameer and Pankaj, the original credits were unintentionally missed. When brought to notice, Friday Filmworks acknowledged this and immediately asked the filmmakers to credit Pankaj as the original writer. Ladoo revolves around the topic of religion, focusing more on similarities between Allah & God, in an effective manner.

The director duo said, “It’s a clear case of negligence on our part. We met Pankaj in 2013 when we heard the script from him and loved it but never had a chance to meet him after that. Recently, we revisited the idea and thought of making it. Due to the huge gap, unfortunately, we did not realise that we should have kept Pankaj in the loop while developing the same. We are more than happy to give Pankaj his credit and we are absolutely sorry that we unknowingly skipped his name from the credit list as the original writer. We would also like to apologise to Friday Filmworks as they were unnecessarily dragged into the controversy and thank them for all the support.”

Devendra Deshpande, Business Head of Friday Filmworks, shared his views saying, “We, as a content company take pride in giving credit where it is due. As soon as we realised that some mishap has happened, we went to the root of it to get it rectified. The writer is an extremely talented person and deserves all credits”.

Pankaj, who appreciates the acknowledgement, said, “I am really happy that Friday Filmworks got into it immediately and rectified it. It’s embarrassing for the matter to get into an ugly space. Never intended to do the same.”