The Autobots, a Chinese animated children's film, is being labeled by Chinese netizens as a shameful copycat of Cars since it hit the cinema last Friday.
Netizens say the animation strongly resembles that in Cars, which was produced by Pixar Animation Studios, not only in character design, but also in its film poster.
"The leading character in The Autobots looks exactly like that in Cars; how shameless the director is," criticized Yaqing, a netizen on Douban.com.
"The poster's Chinese title is almost the same as Cars; aren't they afraid that they will be sued?," netizen NuoWeiYaoYang said, adding that on the poster, a car wheel obscures the Chinese character 人 (ren, people). That could misguide audiences, who will assume that that this film is a third installment of the Cars franchise. The Autobots' director, Zhuo Jianbing, disagreed.
"Why can't we have the same Chinese name? It was not illegal after all. And the look only means that we've got a superstar appearance," he said in a telephone interview with sina.com.
According to Zhuo Jianbing, The Autobots is only for the innocent kids, not for the cynical losers. He also said that his animation is quite different from Cars in terms of the storyline, in that it is the positive thoughts and attitudes in the movie that matters.
The Autobots tells the story of a young genius named Kaka, who has designed the world's most advanced auto control system, making it possible for people and automobiles to communicate directly.
Zhuo said that the essence of the movie is to encourage the younger generation to use their brains, be curious about science and inventions, and to create a brighter future for China. "Our movie is quite inspiring," he said.
Zhuo has received many crank calls since the movie made its debut.
"Recently I have received quite a lot strange phone calls and messages, I feel that somebody wants to bring me down," Zhuo said.
He also said that the box office has been greatly crippled by the backlashes. "Because of the smear, we had fallen short on the box office," Zhuo said. He said that the movie has made only 4.3 million yuan ($692,300) at the box office, much lower than what he had expected.
The Autobots is produced by Xiamen Lanhuoyan (Blue Fire) Film and Animation Co. Ltd. and released by Beijing G-POINT Film Culture Media Co. Ltd.