Bollywood strikes yet again, this time the victim being our beloved Max Payne. Mx. X, an upcoming Hindi thriller movie directed by Mukesh Bhatt and starring Emraan Hashmi and Amyra Dastur. A few days ago, couple of press shots promoting the movie were revealed. And they bear an uncanny similarity, or should I say, congruence to cover art of games Max Payne and Max Payne 2.
What’s worthy to note is, even with the cover art of so-called Mr. X is exactly the same copy of the Max Payne games, the movie’s plot has got nothing to do with Max Payne. Infact, the movie is about a guy who can turn invisible, played by Emraan Hashmi.
So true has Mr. X been to the Max Payne franchise that cover art from the terrible Max Payne (The Movie) has also been head-to-toe carbon copied. When you can turn invisible, what will you use this superpower for? Well, in this case, “Mr. X” will apparently copy cover art from the entire Max Payne catalogue.
Mr. X releases on 17 April, 2015. Lets see how many bullet time combos Emraan Hashmi will be performing.
Max Payne has been a victim to infringement not only by Bollywood, but also by the great Indian reality television industry. MTV Roadies had it’s host Raghu dress up as Max Payne from Max Payne 3 in its promotional posters.
This isn’t the first time Bollywood has so blatantly copied cover and promotional images from video games. Hell, its not even the second. Actually, its not even the third, nor the fourth. Salman Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger’s cover was taken from Uncharted. iLL did an article a while back with Watch_Dogs cover art being stolen by Bollywood movie 18.11 within just 2 days of the games’ launch.
Will Bollywood continue with its long standing culture of imitating Western media? Its good to think that it won’t, but sadly, it will, and it will only increase with time. Lack of originality is what the media in this country lacks.
