The film was originally supposed to open on January 9 for Pongal, but the censor board wasn't in any hurry, and the makers even dragged the matter all the way to the Madras High Court and then the Supreme Court before agreeing to let a revising committee take another look. Officials eventually ordered the makers to mute references to TVK and New India, and told them to cut a scene showing the Indian flag falling to the ground, part of twelve total changes demanded before the film got its A certificate. And back in April, while all that was still playing out, a high definition copy of the still uncertified movie leaked online, racking up close to 1.2 crore views before it finally got blocked. Chennai police later arrested several people over that leak, including a freelance film editor who reportedly had access to the print.
Now the film has been re certified with forty one extra seconds tacked on, pushing the total runtime to three hours,three minutes and fifty two seconds,though the A rating hasn't changed.Somehow a movie that already leaked out in full still needed a fresh cut, which feels almost funny when you sit and think about it,and KVN Productions didn't spell out exactly what got added or trimmed this time, only confirming that the new print is headed to somewhere close to a thousand screens across Tamil Nadu.Jana Nayagan is set to open on July 23,with Pooja Hegde, Bobby Deol,Mamitha Baiju and Prakash Raj rounding out the cast alongside Vijay, who also carries the title card of TVK's chief in the film.
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