It appears that the cast and crew of Adipurush are always dogged by controversy. In the latest incident, Om Raut, the director of Adipurush, caused outrage when he kissed actress Kriti Sanon at Lord Venkateswara temple in Tirupati on June 7. The movie’s team attended a pre-release ceremony at Tirupati’s Sri Venkateswara University Stadium after which the duo was spotted at the temple for darshan. He was seen kissing Kriti Sanon goodbye outside the temple premises.
Pecks & flying kiss are not allowed & it’s basic sense they shouldn’t do this in temple premises. #Bollywood actor #KritiSanon greeted Director #OmRaut with a peck & in return #OmRaut with a flying kiss while leaving after #LordVenkateshwara darshan in #Tirupati. pic.twitter.com/qiGEs6gwyD
— Sowmith Yakkati (@sowmith7) June 7, 2023
The Chilkur Balaji Temple’s head priest in Telangana called the action condemnable and voiced his opposition to it. “This is a condemnable act. Even a husband and wife do not go there (temple) together. You can go to a hotel room and do it. Your behaviour is like insulting Ramayan, and Goddess Sita,” he stated.
Ramesh Naidu Nagothu, the state secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, expressed his disapproval at the public display of affection in a now-deleted tweet.
“After coming to the temple, I feel extremely amazing. It felt nice. We had a great darshan today morning. Yesterday, we put out the trailer. It’s a mesmerising feeling and I cannot put it into words,” Om Raut said while talking about his temple visit.
Many people opposed before when Kriti Sanon visited the Sita Cave and Kalaram Temple in Panchavati, Nashik. They were of the view that as their film’s release date approaches, Bollywood people start to practise religion. At the same time, several people advocated banning the use of religious places for movie marketing.
Adipurush is a cinematic adaption of the Indian epic Ramayana, which is directed by Om Raut. Kriti Sanon portrays Janaki in the movie, while Prabhas plays Raghav along with Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh. Sunny Singh appears as Lakshmana and Devdatta Nage dons the role of Bajrang. The multi-lingual project is reportedly made at a humungous budget of Rs 500 crore and is co-financed by Retrophiles and Bhushan Kumar’s T-series. It is all set to release in theatres on June 16 in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
The movie was earlier in controversy over the look of the characters and perceived poor VFX. When the teaser of the movie was first released in October last year, the Ravana played by Saif Ali Khan resembled an Islamic invader and the look of Hanumana also didn’t resemble the description in Ramayana. Ram and Lakshman were seen wearing leather attire, which went against the description of simple attire during exile.
