Rajamouli’s Varanasi event: Filmmaker condemns unauthorized drone leak incident

Director SS Rajamouli has expressed disappointment over the leaked teaser of his film ‘Varanasi’. Addressing a technical glitch that occurred during the official teaser launch in Ramoji City, Hyderabad, Rajamouli specifically pointed out the unauthorized capture of teaser footage during testing through the use of drones.

He said, “We ambitiously decided to install this huge LED screen and brought the best LED panels. To power it, we needed more than 45 generators. Yesterday, we had to test everything, the crane, the black cloth, the video. During the test, someone started capturing drone footage and uploaded our content on social media as if it was from Netflix.
This is a year of our hard work, thousands of hours of hundreds of people and crores of rupees leaked due to a drone flying randomly. We couldn’t even test our video properly. We are now afraid of more leaks. We took a risk and it didn’t work out. There is an electrical fault.”

The teaser of ‘Varanasi’ is set in 512 BC. It opens with scenes of Varanasi, saints performing Yagya, forests, Ugra Bhati cave, ancient war, 7200 BC and burning of Lanka by Lord Hanuman. In this, the bearded look of Mahesh Babu has also been revealed with a blood stained shirt, while he has a trident in his hand. He is then seen riding a bull, with the ancient temples of Kashi (another name for Varanasi) behind him. Rajamouli also shared an ex-post which read, “Mahesh Babu as Rudra in #Varanasi.”

Shruti Haasan’s live singing performance also took place in this program. Shruti’s first single from ‘Globetrotter’ was released recently. Keeravani composed the music for the track. Sharing a video from the recording studio with Keeravani, Shruti wrote on Instagram, “It was a pleasure to sing for MM Keeravani sir’s music. What a powerful track – Let it Bang, Globetrotter.”

Priyanka Chopra and Prithviraj Sukumaran also play important roles in ‘Varanasi’.