Following the release of the trailer of Kalki 2898 AD, Hollywood concept artists Oliver Beck and Sung Choi took to X (formerly Twitter) to accuse Vyjayanthi Movies (the makers of the film) of plagiarising their artwork. In an interview with Indian Express, Oliver shared that the makers of Kalki 2898 AD had initially approached him to collaborate on the film. However, after negotiations fell through, he alleges seeing resemblances to his work in the trailer, which was released on June 10.
Both Oliver Beck and Sung Choi shared side-by-side comparisons of their original illustrations with frames from the trailer. While Sung Choi later removed his tweet, Oliver persisted with his accusations against the creators of Kalki 2898 AD. He said, “Sung Choi wrote about his work being stolen in Kalki 2898 AD trailer on Twitter and then I clicked on the trailer and saw that it is inspired by my work.”
He elaborated, “It might be difficult to see the plagiarism when you are not an artist. You might not see it immediately but all my artist friends that I have talked to and the artist community are very clear that this was referenced from my work and you can see clearly that the main takeaways are the colour palettes, it is the same, and also the shapes. It is not an exact copy but the shapes are similar. It is too much of a coincidence because they also contacted me to work on this film. So, they know my portfolio and they have seen my work so it is too much of a coincidence.”
Sad to see that some of the work I did for Star Trek: Prodigy got stolen by Vyjayanthi movies in their trailer:https://t.co/KWrFKJkksn
This is the matte painting I did for Star Trek under direction of Ben Hibon and Alessandro Taini and then as it appears in the trailer. pic.twitter.com/CYFP008Rd7
— Oliver Beck (@OliverBeckArt) June 13, 2024
When asked if he would take any legal action against the makers, Oliver spoke about the difficulty due to the absence of direct replication of his work. He explained, “Legal recourse is challenging for me because there isn’t direct copying of my artwork. Legal action typically requires very evident plagiarism, such as in Sung Choi’s case where the work was practically copy-pasted.”
Oliver concluded, “This is the first time that an artwork of mine was plagiarised on such a big scale. It has happened before but they were very minor things. This is the first time my work got duplicated in an Indian film.”
Kalki 2898 AD stars Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Kamal Haasan, and Disha Patani in key roles. It features a dystopian world. The post-apocalyptic film is inspired by Hindu scriptures and is set in the year 2898 AD. The film is directed by Nag Ashwin.
