Deepika Padukone’s new jeans advertisement is in the eye of the storm. Filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala has claimed that the brand, depicting Deepika, has lifted her work from her previous film, ‘Yeh Ballet’. The sets depicting the film’s original concept is plagiarised as is, claims the filmmaker, “A couple of days ago (actress and ballet dancer) Cindy Jourdain brought this Levi’s ad to my attention. I was shocked to see our ‘Yeh Ballet’ dance studio set in this ad, because it was conceptualised and created out of a derelict space by our production designer, Shailaja, from scratch and dismantled after our shoot.” Taraporevala then charged the team with copying their entire material. “Basically Nadia Marquard Otzen (the director of this ad) saw ‘Yeh Ballet’ and decided to plagiarise our set down to the very last detail. Would Levi’s and the director ever think of doing that in the west without permission / acknowledgment, and passing it off as their own creative work? This is not homage, this is intellectual theft! It’s so unfair to our wonderful production designer Shailaja to have her work ripped off like that,” she said, and added, “Are you so creatively bankrupt? What were you thinking?” tagging the brand and its creative team for answers. In the meantime, Deepika has stayed out of this entire controversy.
