Hichki director Sidharth P Malhotra responds to writing credit accusations, says they are baseless

The trailer of Rani Mukerji’s upcoming film _Hichki_ was released recently on 19 December. Soon after, the makers of the film were found at the receiving end of numerous allegations — from being plagiarised owing to its resemblance to the 2008's American drama _Front of the Class_ , to not giving due  writing credit  to writer Nishant Kaushik. [caption id=“attachment_4265843” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Youtube screen grab from the Hichki trailer.[/caption] While the makers had responded to the plagiarism remarks, the director of the film, Siddharth P Malhotra clarified accusations raised by Kaushik. In an interview with DNA, Malhotra said, “I had acquired the rights to make Front of the Class as a Hindi motion picture in 2013. Nishant Kaushik’s claims are baseless. He was contacted through Exceed Entertainment and I haven’t even met him once. We were looking for writers who could come up with a take on the Front of the Class. We had approached several writers including Nishant.” “This was, 2015. Several prominent writers like Amole Gupte, Abbas Tyrewala have worked on the story of Hichki and we have obtained NOCs from them and I thank each one of them for being the creative contributors of Hichki. We have credited all the writers who have worked in our film. So, it is ridiculous that we will not give credit to anyone in particular who has worked hard and contributed for Hichki,” he added. Hichki has been produced by Maneesh Sharma under the banner of Yash Raj Films. The film is slated to release on 23 February, 2018.