'Opening scene is copied 90%': Why Alia Bhatt's Alpha teaser has fans talking about La Femme Nikita

The teaser of Alia Bhatt and Sharvari's upcoming spy thriller Alpha has generated plenty of excitement ahead of its release, but it has also triggered a debate on social media, with some viewers claiming that parts of the film appear heavily inspired by the 1990 French thriller La Femme Nikita.

Released on Wednesday, the teaser introduces Alia as a highly trained operative and hints at her complicated relationship with Bobby Deol's character, who appears to have mentored her from a young age.

The opening sequence shows a young Alia sharing a meal with Bobby Deol on her 18th birthday. Instead of a celebration, she receives a card with a room number and is told that it is finally time to put her years of training to use.

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The scene quickly drew comparisons with La Femme Nikita, directed by Luc Besson. The cult French thriller follows Nikita, a troubled young woman who is secretly recruited by a government agency after being arrested for murder. Her death is staged, and she undergoes years of intensive training before being deployed on covert assassination missions.

Several viewers pointed to what they described as striking similarities between a restaurant sequence in Alpha and a key moment from La Femme Nikita. In Alpha, Bobby Deol's character takes Alia's character to an upscale restaurant on her birthday, where she unexpectedly receives her first assignment. In the French classic, Bob, played by Tchky Karyo, takes Nikita, played by Anne Parillaud, to a fine-dining restaurant before handing her a gun and assigning her a mission.

The similarities became a major talking point online soon after the teaser was released.

One social media user shared the scene from La Femme Nikita and wrote, "BBNG notes a copied scene from #Alpha Teaser. Operative word is 'loosely copied'. The opening scene is loosely copied from the scene in Luc Besson's action classic La Femme Nikita."

Another user claimed, "The opening scene is copied 90% from the scene in Luc Besson's action classic La Femme Nikita. The plot is also similar."

Apart from the comparisons to the French thriller, some viewers also drew parallels between a wolf-and-sheep analogy used by Bobby Deol's character in Alpha and a similar dialogue featured in Clint Eastwood's 2014 war drama American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper.

Reacting to the similarity, one cinema enthusiast wrote, "Alpha didn't copy American Sniper; it just got a little too inspired by it. Maybe YRF should hunt for fresh talent instead of familiar dialogue."

Directed by Shiv Rawail, Alpha is the first female-led film in Yash Raj Films' Spy Universe. Produced by Yash Raj Films and backed by Aditya Chopra, the film also stars Sharvari and Bobby Deol. It joins the expanding spy franchise that includes Ek Tha Tiger, Pathaan and War.

Alpha is scheduled for a theatrical release on July 3, 2026.