Rajkumar Hirani, known for delivering some of Bollywood’s biggest hits like Munna Bhai MBBS and 3 Idiots, initially had a very different vision for PK. In a recent interview, he revealed that the film’s original script bore a striking resemblance to Christopher Nolan’s Inception, forcing him to change the story.
Hirani explained that when he and his team began writing PK, Inception had just been released. Upon watching it, he realized that his film’s concept had an uncanny similarity to Nolan’s mind-bending thriller. To prevent accusations of plagiarism, he decided to alter the screenplay. Speaking to Galatta Plus, he said, “When we started writing PK, Inception came, and we realised our film was like Inception. PK had the power of getting into people’s minds and changing what they had experienced in their life. Because we felt, you become cynical about certain things if you have experienced life in a particular way. So if your experience can change, your cynicism will not be there, you become a different person. So we had gone on that path. So we realised if you do this, it will look like we have copied Inception.”
After recognizing these similarities, Hirani and his team explored a different narrative direction, introducing a courtroom sequence in PK. However, just as they were finalizing this new approach, OMG – Oh My God! hit the screens, featuring a similar courtroom-driven theme. He recalled, “We started writing something else. Then OMG – Oh My God! came, which is also… We had walked that path also, of him going to the courtroom. So the second half kept on changing.”
This wasn’t the first time Rajkumar Hirani had spoken about the creative challenges faced during PK’s scripting phase. In an earlier interview, he mentioned how excited they were about their supposedly unique concept, only to be shocked when someone pointed out its resemblance to another story. “Someone told us that this film has been written by someone else, and when we went and saw it, we were shocked. If we made this, people would say it’s copied, so we were worried,” he admitted.
Despite the hurdles, PK ultimately emerged as a groundbreaking film with a fresh storyline, earning immense love from audiences and becoming one of Bollywood’s highest-grossing movies. But had it retained its original concept, it might have been remembered as Bollywood’s Inception instead.
