india

Updated: Aug 04, 2019 20:41 IST

A day after trailer of Jayam Ravi’s upcoming film Comali released, outrage began pouring in from Tamil superstar Rajinikanth fans.

Jayam Ravi, who has done many Tamil and Telugu films, is the male lead in the movie, which releases on August 15. A two-minute long trailer of the movie was released on Saturday after which Rajini fans took to Twitter claiming that the actor has been portrayed wrongly in the movie.

The trailer seems to be mocking Rajinikanth’s unending delay in entering politics, which has upset Rajini fans and members of Rajini Makkal Mandram – a fan-based organisation. The upset fans are now demanding that certain scenes, which they think are unkind to Rajinikanth, be cut from the movie.

According to the trailer, lead actor Ravi’s character, who has been in coma for 14 years, wakes up. His friends point him to a news clip playing on TV which shows actor Rajinikanth assuring fans about his political entry. On seeing the TV clip, Ravi’s character asks his friends what was the year now. His friends say it is 2016. However, Ravi says it was 1996, suggesting Rajinikanth made the announcement that year and not in 2016.

Rajinikanth had, in fact, announced his entry into politics in December 2017 and said that he would take the political plunge and contest the next assembly polls in the state whose politics is dominated by Dravidian majors-the DMK and the AIADMK. So, the scene in the movie is being seen as taking a dig at Rajinikanth’s long awaited entry into politics.

Angered with the Comali trailer, Rajini fans have been tweeting against the movie with hashtag ‘Naalaya Tamilagam Rajini’ – (Rajini is TN’s future), which was trending on Twitter on Saturday. In the tweets, the fans are backing Rajini and hitting out at the Comali crew.

“We Rajini fans are not forcing you guys to vote for him. Our motive is to remove false notions about him,” said Mayon, a Rajini fan on Twitter.

A senior Rajini Makkal Mandram (RMM) district secretary said that the trailer has many factual errors.

“We want to clear two things. In 1996 our leader (Rajini) had not announced about launching any political party. He just supported the alliance of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(DMK) and Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) (TMC) led by late GK Moopanar. Our leader had not met his fans in 2016. It was only in 2017; he addressed his fans and declared his aspiration to join politics. The movie says the video was released in 2016. It is wrong. So, it seems they are intentionally hurting our leader,” the RMM worker, who is not ready to reveal his identity told HT.

When Comali movie producer Ishari K Ganesh addressed the media here at Chennai on Sunday, he denied the allegations.

“We have not included any scenes to depict the superstar actor. I am one among lakhs of people expecting political entry of Rajinikanth,” Ganesh said.

Actor-turned-politician and Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) president Kamal Haasan has extended his support to Rajini over the Comali movie trailer.

According to MNM spokesperson Murali Abbas, Kamal has contacted the producer of Comali film to register his annoyance through phone on Sunday.

“Our leader Kamal Haasan has called the producer Ishari Ganesh over the Comali film row. Though the film director has claimed that the scenes about Rajini’s delayed political entry were just for fun, Kamal said he could not take that as humour,” said Abbas in a statement.