No sooner did the trailer of Betaal drop online last week than Marathi screenwriters Sameer Wadekar and Mahesh Gosawi moved the Bombay High Court, alleging that Netflix and Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment have lifted the plot of their zombie film, Vetaal.

"We had taken our script to several production houses. We hadn't pitched it to Red Chillies Entertainment, so the onus isn't on them, but on the platform that commissioned it. I haven't been able to figure out how [the idea] reached them. I am told the show went on floors in July 2019, a year after my script was registered with the Screen Writers' Association [SWA]. We've registered a complaint with the SWA too," said Wadekar, hours after the hearing on Friday.