Bollywood and controversies can seldom be mutually exclusive. And so has been the case with the Tiger Shroff starrer Munna Michael that hits the silver screens this Friday. Even ahead of its theatrical release, the movie has been at the eyes of several storms.  

 

Thank U 4 making me realise dat I cannot b paired along wid d fair & handsome bcz I m dark & not good looking, but I never focus on that.

 

— Nawazuddin Siddiqui (@Nawazuddin_S) July 17, 2017

Most recently, one of the film’s leading actors, Nawazuddin Siddique was at the centre of a fresh racism debate after sending out a cryptic Tweet from his account. It was later understood that it might have been a dig at the casting director of Nawaz’s upcoming venture Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, Sanjay Chouhan.

In an interview to a daily, Chouhan had said they “can’t cast fair and handsome people with Nawazuddin.” But he later came out and clarified that his statements were misconstructed. 

“I was completely misquoted. All I said was the film needed actors as good as Nawazuddin. You need actors who could match his stature. I don’t know from where the ‘fair and handsome’ bit came but I never said the words,” Chouhan told PTI.

This controversy broke out almost exactly a month after Tiger Shroff allegedly referring to female actors in his movies as ‘padding,’ when asked how he felt about working with newcomers in the industry. 

Of course the Student of the Year 2 actor had to later shift into damage control mode in the wake of severe backlash. 

“People who know me well know that I am not the kind of a guy to insult and disrespect women. I never called my heroines padding. I was referring to everything else about the film — how the director designs the film, shoots, and pads it up. I was talking about the structure and the padding around a film to make it larger and not about the girls at all,” he was quoted by DNA.

And how can we forget the police complaint filed by an amateur writer-director against Munna Michael’s director Sabbir Khan, who is teaming up with Tiger for the third time after Baaghi and Heropanti. 

An insider source tells us that Kritik is still continuing to fight the court case against the alleged theft of script by Tiger and Sabbir, but he ‘doesn’t have the money or the power’ to compete against them.

For Tiger, he tried to come out clean earlier this year by saying that ‘I am not a thief and I don’t lie and I am not a cheater.’

We don’t really know if all these sagas were manufactured as a part of the film’s promotions. If yes, only time will tell whether they’ll prove to be successful in getting bums on seats.

The film also stars debutant Nidhhi Agerwal and as Tiger told us during our February issue cover shoot, could have him ‘doing something like never before.’