Siddharth Anand BREAKS Silence On Deepika Padukone Missing from Fighter Promotions

Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone are gearing up for their next film Fighter. The action thriller will be released on January 25 and has already created a lot of hype among the audience. Well, ahead of the release the makers have started promotion, and all actors are seen except Deepika Padukone. Even on the trailer launch she was missing. Her absence sparked rumours. However, Siddharth Anand has finally put rest to all speculations and revealed the exact reason for her being missed from the promotions.

During an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Siddharth Anand said, “This is a promotional strategy that we have taken. You will start seeing Deepika Padukone from tomorrow (Tuesday) everywhere. People put a lot of conjectures into things. Deepika was supposed to come for the trailer launch, but she was under the weather. And now she is going to be everywhere; our strategy is such.” He further added, “Obviously, we can’t do without Deepika… Deepika and Hrithik’s pair is one of the major highlights. And it’s a huge excitement for me as a filmmaker to see both of them (together). So, I can imagine that even the audience is waiting for (her). You will start seeing them closer to the release. Also, we didn’t want too much of Hrithik and Deepika before the release. We wanted people to enjoy them on the big screen. We didn’t want that saturation.”

Fighter has been given a U/A certificate. According to a report by Bollywood Hungama, the Censor Board has asked Fighter’s makers to remove ‘sexually suggested visuals’. The shot is allegedly said to be for eight seconds long. “These 8 seconds of visuals were probably replaced by ‘suitable shots,’” the report stated. It is also claimed that an audio in a TV news scene was removed and replace in with a 23 seconds of audio.

The CBFC has also allegedly asked to mute an abusive word and add an anti-smoking static message in Hindi. Following the changes, Fighter was given a U/A certificate on January 19. The film’s runtime is said to be 2 hours and 46 minutes. Fighter releases in cinemas worldwide on January 25. The filmmaker’s last release was Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan and it was a massive box office success.