The Bombay High Court has dismissed a copyright infringement plea against the upcoming Netflix series Betaal. As per reports, Marathi writers Sameer Wadekar and Mahesh Goswami had alleged that the show, which is produced by Red Chillies Entertainment, was lifted from their zombie script Vetaal. The writers had moved the Bombay High Court after the show’s trailer was unveiled last week.
Directed by Patrick Graham and Nikhil Mahajan, Betaal tells the story of “a remote village which quickly becomes the arena of a breathless battle when a two-century-old East India Company Colonel, infected with the Betaal’s curse, and his battalion of blood-thirsty zombie redcoats.” The series stars Viineet Kumar, Aahana Kumra, Suchitra Pillai and Jitendra Joshi.
According to reports, Sameer and Mahesh’s script revolves around an environmentalist who arrives in a mining village in Goa. There, a series of murders take place, presumably by the undead army of the Vetaal demigod. Finally, killers are revealed to be humans, who are then attacked by a real army of undead soldiers from Shivaji’s era. Sameer and Mahesh had copyrighted their idea in 2015 and later registered the bound script with the Screenwriter’s Association (SWA) in 2018.Betaal sees its release on May 24 on Netflix.