Screenwriter Gazal Dhaliwal on Thursday slammed Sandeep Reddy Vanga for not crediting her in Animal, alleging that the director has hogged the hard work she put in to flaunt the title of ‘writer-editor-director’ in the blockbuster’s opening credits.

Sharing a screenshot of the opening credits and excerpts from two poems — Mard by Javed Akhtar and If by Rudyard Kipling — about “being a man”, the 41-year-old screenwriter wrote, “There is a particular kind of filmmaker who claims the ‘Writer’ title in the top credit of their film, even when there are other writers who have written the Screenplay and Dialogues of the film.”

Known for writing the screenplay of the popular Netflix series Mismatched, Gazal said how some filmmakers have a “deep-seated need for power” and get the “biggest high” after claiming the title of the writer.

The screenwriter also explained why she was “compelled” to call out the Animal director. “The protagonist, claiming to be an alpha male, tells the girl he likes that evolutionarily, women would always choose the alpha man to mate with. So, then the beta men were like — and I paraphrase — what should they do? After all, they had desires too. And that’s how, says this alpha protagonist condescendingly, ‘poetry’ came to be – so that the beta men could seduce women by cooking up words,” she wrote, adding how petty the “alpha male” is “who is cooking up words to seduce the woman”.

Released on December 1, Animal is headlined by Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor and Rashmika Mandanna. The film, which also features Tripti Dimri and Bobby Deol, has been facing heat from different quarters for its alleged portrayal of toxic masculinity and misogyny.