Writer Gazal Dhaliwal calls out Sandeep Reddy Vanga for not giving credit to co-writers for Animal

Writer Gazal Dhaliwal, who has written films like Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga and Qarib Qarib Singlle, has slammed Animal director Sandeep Reddy Vanga for not sharing the credits with other writers for the screenplay of the film. Gazal has claimed that Vanga has hogged the limelight by giving himself credit for writing, editing, and directing the film.

Gazal took to her Instagram handle on Thursday to post a screenshot from the film's opening credits, which proclaim Vanga as the “Writer-Editor-Director” of Animal. In her post she said she was late to the party but had a “seemingly small insight” about the director specifically from the point of view of a screenwriter.

“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,” wrote Gazal.

She pointed out that since Vanga has written the story of the film, he should've taken credit only for that. Gazal mentioned how other co-writers of the screenplay, his brother Pranay Reddy Vanga and Suresh Bandaru who wrote the dialogues and Saurabh Gupta were relegated to the sidelines.

Gazal added that while there are numerous things in the film that she found disturbing, she feels “compelled” to write the post for a different reason.

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The writer highlighted the scene where Ranbir Kapoor's character Rannvijay Singh tells his love interest, Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna), that women were historically attracted to alpha males. So the beta males had to come up with things like poetry to attract female attention.

“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. By the way, a poet, as we all know, is a ‘Writer’. Which also happens to be a credit some filmmakers find difficult to share,” Gazal wrote further.

Gazal has co-written Homi Adajania's upcoming crime thriller Murder Mubarak.