Just how original is Queen?

The 'honeymoon alone' twist resounds in the American indie, The Art of Travel.

A scuppered wedding, heartbreak and then the bride-tobe going off on her honeymoon alone, Vikas Bahl's Queen is being celebrated for being fiercely original. But Mirror has stumbled upon a 2008 American indie drama, The Art of Travel, which has some striking similarities with Bahl's film.

The difference is that in the film directed by Thomas Whelan, it is the groom-to-be who discovers that his bride has been cheating on him and calls off the wedding as they are about to exchange vows. Then, like Rani, this Raja too sets off on his honeymoon alone, setting aside parental apprehensions. On the way, he meets with an eclectic bunch and they become elemental in his quest of self-discovery.

Even though Conner's forest adventure is nothing like Rani's drunken escapades, the novel 'honeymoon without a husband (or a wife)' twist that has caught the imagination of the Indian viewers, cannot be discounted.

We called Bahl to check whether the American drama had inspired Queen, but he didn't respond to our calls or text messages. However, his spokesperson later called in to say, "Sex in the City, Under the Tuscan Sun, Eat Pray and Love also have the same story, so does that mean they are all inspired by each other? And Queen also is inspired by them?"

This is not the first time Queen has faced a plagiarism charge. In the past, writer Abhigyan Jha claimed that several scenes from the film had been lifted from the Parvati Balagopalan-directed Phir Zindagi, which was shown to Bahl during his tenure as the head of UTV Spotboy. Phir Zindagi never got a theatrical release.