Animal: Gazal Dhaliwal Slams Sandeep Reddy Vanga For Sidelining Screenplay Writers, Says 'It Happens A Lot...'

Ranbir Kapoor-led Animal is one of the most-talked-about films of the year. The film was finally released on December 1 amid much anticipation surrounding its gripping storyline and the interesting characters played by the stellar star cast, especially Bobby Deol. Bobby Deol was seen on screen after a long time and his performance in the film has been greatly appreciated. However, this success didn’t come without its own share of controversies owing to the themes and characters of the film. Now adding more to it, writer Gazal Dhaliwal known for penning the hit Netflix series Mismatched has accused Sandeep Reddy Vanga for not attributing credits to the screenwriters.

Sharing a screenshot of the credits title which shows Sandeep Reddy Vanga as the writer, editor and director of Animal, Gazal wrote her observations in the caption. It read, “There is a particular kind of filmmaker who claims the ‘Writer’ title in the top credit of their film, even when there are other writers who have written the Screenplay and Dialogues of the film. It happens a lot, by the way, in our world. These filmmakers have a deep-seated need of power. Even though being a director is the most powerful anyway. For some reason, it would seem that claiming the ‘Writer’ credit is what gives them the biggest high.”

A post shared by Gazal Dhaliwal (@gazaldhaliwal)

She further shared her commentary on one of the scenes of the film where Ranbir Kapoor comments on the qualities of an alpha male. Her note continued, “Although there were numerous things in the film which I found disturbing, there is a seemingly-small thing that refuses to leave me… and is truly the reason I felt compelled to write this post. The protagonist, claiming to be an alpha male, tells the girl he likes that evolutionarily, women would always choose the alpha man to mate with. So, then the beta men were like – and I paraphrase – what should they do? After all, they had desires too. And that’s how, says this alpha protagonist condescendingly, ‘poetry’ came to be – so that the beta men could seduce women by cooking up words. And I couldn’t help but think – how small, how very petty of this alpha male, who is cooking up words to seduce the woman.”

Although Animal is doing phenomenal business, it has been hit by controversy. The film has been accused of glorifying misogyny and toxic masculinity by several social media users.