Prabhu Mundkur’s time-travel romantic drama unofficial remake of Korean film?

The Kannada film Murphy, which released in October 2024 and dropped on OTT in December, had joint writing credits for director BSP Varma and lead actor Prabhu Mundkur, with the duo taking great pride in presenting a sci-fi romantic drama. The story of Murphy follows the relationship between two people, separated by decades and connected through a radio.

Prabhu was David, a collegian, whose attempts to repair a Murphy radio lead him to establishing a connection with Janani (Roshni Prakash), a student of the same college, who, however, lives in a time gone by. What is it that connects Janani to David? That is the crux of the narrative of Murphy, which also stars Dattanna and Ila Veermala in pivotal roles, while Ashwin Rao Pallakki, Mahantesh Hiremath, Rramprasadd Banavara, BSP Varma, and Master Dhawan were also on the cast.

A few days ago, BSP Varma posted a promo video of Murphy on social media, to remind audiences that the film is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. One of the responses to this post came from an eagle-eyed netizen, who said that Murphy bears striking similarities to a Korean film from 2000 called Ditto, in which two students in the same school, one in 1979, the other in 2000, are somehow able to talk to each other using amateur radio.

The film was later remade in 2022 and that version is available on Amazon Prime Video. In the newer version of Ditto, though, the girl is from modern day, while the guy is from a time gone by. Murphy is a lot closer to the 2000 original. Varma has not responded to the query if Murphy is an unofficial remake. Incidentally, the filmmaker had earlier faced questions if Murphy was based on The Love Letter. 

Murphy was Varma’s second collaboration with Prabhu, after Urvi. The duo co-wrote the screenplay, based on a story called Radio. Prabhu also served as executive producer and associate director on the film.

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