The producers of Amaran have taken action to address a recent controversy surrounding the film, sparked by the use of a real phone number in a pivotal scene. The issue arose after an engineering student from Chennai, VV Vaageesan, began receiving a barrage of unsolicited calls following the release of the Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi-starrer.
Amaran controversy
The scene in question occurs during the song 'Hey Minnale', where Sai Pallavi's character, Indu, writes her phone number on a chit and passes it to Mukund, played by Sivakarthikeyan. Unfortunately, the phone number used in the film turned out to belong to Vaageesan. The film, which began streaming on Netflix, and the music video on YouTube, have now blurred the phone number in response to the backlash.
What exactly happened
The incident came to light after the film’s release on October 31. Vaageesan, who was celebrating Diwali with his family, started receiving an overwhelming number of calls from fans hoping to connect with Sai Pallavi. Initially confused, he realised the connection when the volume of calls became unmanageable.
Vaageesan had issued a legal notice to the production firm, Raajkamal Films International, owned by superstar Kamal Haasan.
He also filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court seeking to quash the Censor Board certificate issued to the film. He also sought compensation of Rs 1.1 crore from the movie’s producer and director.
The filmmakers swiftly acted to blur the phone number in both the streaming version of the movie on Netflix and the music video available on YouTube.
Amaran box office success
'Amaran', an adaptation of the book series 'India's Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes' by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh, chronicles the life of Major Mukund. The brave officer lost his life in a counterterrorism operation and was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra. Despite the controversy, the film has been a massive box office success, earning over ₹300 crore.