Hollywood inspired by Kamal Haasan again? But was he actually credited?

While Indian filmmakers are usually accused of copying or being inspired by Hollywood films, here is one actor/director whose movies would do just the opposite. Living up to the 'Ulaganayagan' tag, some of his films have been inspired from as well as inspired the Hollywood films. If one can recall, couple of years back in an interview, Kamal Haasan himself had said that Hollywood makers used to steal a lot of scripts from South Indian films and one of his films, ‘Swati Mutyam’ (Sirpikkul Muthu) was ripped off in Hollywood as Forrest Gump. Also, Hollywood iconic director Quentin Tarantino had admitted in a private conversation with Anurag Kashyap that few stunt sequences in Aalavandhan inspired him to make Kill Bill.     

Adding to the list of Hollywood movies which were inspired from Kamal Haasan's films, Sam Elliott's "The Hero" has been making noise on the internet. The trailer of the film was released recently and one could not avoid noticing the striking resemblance that the movie's plot has similar to that of Kamal Haasan's Uttama Villain.   

In both the films, the protagonists are leading film stars and are diagnosed with cancer. They want to have their focus on delivering one last film in their career and in the process, they reconnect with their estranged daughter.    

Soon, the information about this film spread like wildfire and there were also articles floating on the internet which stated that Kamal Haasan has been credited as the main writer of the film. But in reality, none of the posters or trailer of "The Hero" had credited Kamal Haasan as a writer. The only source of credit seems to be the Wikipedia page of the movie. As anyone can edit the information on Wikipedia, it's still not known if the makers of 'The Hero' has really credited Kamal Haasan or it's just one of those rumors spread by the fans online.    

 In the official posters, Marc Basch and Brett Haley are only credited as writers so far.  

It's the second time this year that a Hollywood movie's plot resembles Kamal Haasan's film. In March, when the trailer of Scarlett Johansson's Rough Night was released, it grabbed the eyeballs for resembling Kamal Haasan's Panchathanthiram and Magalir Mattum.