Ghost writing and uncredited contributions, have been in practice in Telugu Film Industry right from the good old starting days. Malladi RamaKrishna Sastry was said to be the ghost writer for Samudrala Senior, many times. Since, Samudrala was a very busy writer few of the songs, films were written by Malladi and for some undisclosed money agreement. This became evident with clear observation in change of tone in some films when compared to Samudrala’s usual writing.
There were and are many claims regarding popular writers having Ghost writers or anonymous contributors who work for some money and never try to disclose their name in the public. Assistant to a writer and them contributing is completely different from the concept of ghost writing. There you are considered as a rookie who is learning the craft and you get name for that. Whereas as a ghostwriter, you are giving up all your rights on the written material to someone else.
If someone buys your script and works on it as their own, then you might been given credit as the writer of the source material or one of the writers only if the crew and production are ok with it. Otherwise, the content seller might loose all the rights to claim any name as he sold all those rights for the money or some other gain. Several young writers do work in such manner to survive and at times, they might get credited as well.
From past few days, an interesting discussion has been happening among the insiders, that the script of Bharat Ane Nenu, belongs to Thakita Thakita fame, Sreehari Nanu and Koratala Siva paid him one crore for all the copyrights and then changed it in his style. Most of the original has been retained it seems. The interesting question is that, will Koratala give credit to him being a writer himself? It is not that easy for a person to come out and accept it. Sukumar did give credit to Hussain Shah Kiran for Nannaku Prematho. Will Koratala do that? Actually, is the news true? Did he buy the script, is yet to known?!
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