Reality Check: Did Thalapathy Vijay ask Rajinikanth's help to promote Leo?

Leo has managed to capture the imagination of movie-going audiences across the world without any massive promotional efforts from its producers. This trend could be credited to Thalapathy Vijay's superstardom and director Lokesh Kanagaraj's growing clout.

And a tweet from an individual has stirred the hornet's nest, by claiming that Thalapathy Vijay's team reached out to Superstar Rajinikanth to garner support for the film in the media.

ALSO READ: Thalapathy Vijay's Leo creates record at US box office, beats Rajinikanth's Jailer even before release

Rajinikanth blesses Leo team

The tweet emerged following Rajinikanth's best wishes for Leo . The superstar was shooting in Tuticorin for his upcoming movie, which has been temporarily titled Thalaivar 171. During a brief interaction with the media, Rajinikanth shared his excitement about shooting in Tuticorin after a long time. When he was asked to share his thoughts on Leo, he said, "I will pray to god that Leo becomes a huge success. I wish the entire team a humongous success."

However, an individual claimed that Rajinikanth was persuaded by his friends in the industry to speak favourably about Leo. The tweet alleged that Vijay called Riaz K Ahmed, who is Rajinikanth's longtime media manager, requesting the Superstar to offer positive remarks about Leo in the media to boost the film's promotions in the Telugu states and the Hindi-speaking regions.

"So Riyaz Sir today morning again explained this to Superstar, hearing this the Superstar pitied the Team #LeoFilm and came up with a solution for this," claimed one Sathyan Ramasamy on X.

The controversial tweet generated more than 1 million impressions and a massive engagement on X.

The official clarification

ALSO READ: Leo storm in Kerala: Thalapathy Vijay starrer to smash KGF 2 records, Rs 10 crore opening on cards

Riyaz, however, promptly rubbished Sathyan's claim on X. "The said claims are absolutely baseless & untrue. Neither #Thalaivar nor #Thalapathy would even think of something like this for the promotion of a film. Kindly be responsible enough before cooking up fabricated information like this!," Riyaz tweeted.

It's noteworthy that earlier Sathyan also claimed that Vijay and director Lokesh were no longer in talking terms. The controversy escalated when director Vignesh Shivan accidentally liked the controversial tweet with unverified claims.

Vignesh was later forced to issue a clarification , apologising unconditionally to his followers and fans for liking a tweet without fully understanding its contents.