Is Anjaana Anjaani a remake of French film?

Mumbai: Priyanka Chopra's seemingly harmless statement at a promotional event stating that Anjaana Anjaani starts off with a girl and boy meeting on a bridge where both have gone to commit suicide, has triggered an intense round of speculation that the film is a remake of the 1999 French film The Girl On The Bridge.

Director Siddharth Anand is surprised to hear that his leading lady has been talking about the film's beginning on television. "Has she really spoken about it? Well, the similarity to the film is purely coincidental. I haven't seen The Girl On The Bridge. I don't know what it is about. I completely deny any similarity."

Siddharth is no stranger to insinuations of plagiarism. "When my first film Salaam Namaste released, people said it looked like Hum Tum. Then for my Bachna Ae Haseeno, the talk was that it was copied from Alfie. No such thing. When people see Anjaana Anjaani, they'd know it's an original work."

Meanwhile, he and his producer Sajid Nadiadwala are battling the chances of the French studio hearing about the similarities -- imagined or otherwise -- between their film and Anjaana Anjaani. Any notion of a copyright infringement now precipitates a state of hysteria in B-Town as Hollywood studios are no longer tolerant of plagiarism.

Apparently, the film's team has now been instructed not to make any mention of a bridge in their film. So paranoid is Anand about any insinuations that his film is a copy that he has even dropped the first poster-images of his films once it was reported that Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka were positioned in the posters with their heads resting on one another's shoulders from opposite sides, in a pose that replicated the one in the posters of An Education and Walk In The Clouds.

"Actually, it's a classic romantic pose which has been used in movies from time-immemorial. But we don't want even the slightest suggestion of plagiarism on our heads. So we've withdrawn that poster," says the harassed director.