'Adipurush' dialogues altered after public backlash

The makers of Adipurush, the latest adaptation of the epic Ramayana facing public criticism for the poor quality of its dialogues and visual effects, have revised certain lines in the film.

The controversy-ridden film, which registered a bumper opening at the box office only to witness a major drop in collections as negative word of mouth spread on social media, is now screening in theatres with altered dialogues.

Adipurush, which was released across the country in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil on Friday, stars Prabhas as Raghav (Ram), Kriti Sanon as Janaki (Sita) and Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh (Raavan).

Directed by Om Raut and produced by T-Series, the big-budget multilingual saga Adipurush has been panned on social media over its poor VFX and colloquial dialogues, with dialogue writer Manoj Muntashir Shukla under fire for Lord Hanuman's dialogues in the 'Lanka Dahan' sequence, among others.

In the scene, the character of Hanuman had lines like: 'Kapada tere baap ka toh jalegi bhi tere baap ki'. It is now changed to, 'Kapda teri Lanka ka… toh jalegi bhi teri Lanka'.

Shukla on Sunday announced that the makers were ready to "revise some of the dialogues" and the amended lines will be added to the film by this week.

In a long post, he also defended himself.

"I can give countless arguments in favour of my dialogues, but this will not lessen your pain. Me and the producer-director of the film have decided that we will revise some of the dialogues which are hurting you and they will be added to the film this week," Shukla said in the statement shared on his official Twitter account on Sunday.

In his statement, which he wrote in Hindi, Shukla said it is possible that in a three-hour film, he may have written "something different from your imagination for 3 minutes of duration", but viewers shouldn't hurry to label him as a "Sanatan drohi".

"I wrote more than 4,000 lines as dialogues in Adipurush, some sentiments got hurt on five of those lines. In those hundreds of lines, where Shri Ram was glorified, Maa Sita's chastity was described, I was hoping to receive praise for them, which I don't know why I did not get," he added.