Adipurush (2023) on Netflix
NR20232h 59mActionAdventureDrama
In the Panchavati forest, Raghava lives with his wife Janaki and brother Sesh. When Lankesh, the demon king of Lanka, abducts Janaki, Raghava and the Vanara warriors set out to rescue her.
- Netflix0.8/5
- IMDb2.6/10138,405 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes7%
Trailer
Plot summary
Long ago, the demon king Lankesh wins a boon from Brahma that makes him invincible against gods and demons and immune to death by day or by night. In Ayodhya, King Dashratha is bound by a vow to his wife Kaikeyi and sends his eldest son, Raghava, into exile for fourteen years so that her son Bharat can take the throne. Raghava accepts and withdraws to the Panchavati forest by the Godavari River with his wife, Janaki, and his brother, Shesh. There, Lankesh's sister Shurpanakha tries to seduce Raghava and attacks Janaki, and Shesh maims her in defense. Enraged and drawn by her account of Janaki's beauty, Lankesh sends the shape-shifting Maricha as a golden deer to draw the brothers away, then carries Janaki off to Lanka. Raghava and Shesh set out to find her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Adipurush (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Principal photography of Adipurush began in Mumbai on 2 February 2021, and a massive fire accident broke out at the filming location that same day. Duplicate sets had to be erected because of the fire.
- After the first teaser drew severe backlash for its poor VFX and CGI, the makers postponed Adipurush by five months and assigned an extra budget of 100-200 crores to improve the effects, on a reported budget of 500-600 crores.
- Kathmandu's mayor Balen Shah banned Adipurush, saying its depiction showed Sita's birthplace as India rather than Nepal. The film was then banned in Pokhara, and police were deployed across 17 halls in Kathmandu to stop Hindi films from screening.
- Anushka Shetty, Anushka Sharma, Kiara Advani and Keerthy Suresh were all rumoured to have been approached for the role of Sita (Janaki) before Kriti Sanon was cast in November 2020, with the makers confirming her four months later.
- The Allahabad High Court criticised the filmmakers for portraying Rama, Hanuman and other religious characters in an objectionable manner and for testing the tolerance of Hindus, and asked how the Central Board of Film Certification could have passed the film, calling its certification a blunder.
- After criticism of his slang-heavy dialogues in the film, writer Manoj Muntashir announced that he and the producer-director had decided to revise the lines that were hurting people and add them to the film that week.
- In 2026, dialogue writer Manoj Muntashir admitted that working on Adipurush was a mistake and that defending it after the backlash only made matters worse, taking the complete blame and seeking forgiveness from the people of the country.
