Aditya Haasan did not expect this. Two films into his directing career, both of them landing well with audiences, he walked into the pre-release event for Epic and talked about a trailer that seems to have gone sideways on him.

The trailer for Epic, starring Anand Deverakonda and Vaishnavi Chaitanya, dropped to a wave of criticism online, much of it aimed at the sexual themes on display. Haasan says the response caught him completely off balance.

"After the trailer came out, I met with a sudden shock," he said. "I am not used to this. Now I understand how great Sandeep Reddy Vanga garu is." The comparison is telling. Vanga has spent years absorbing exactly this kind of noise around his films, from Arjun Reddy onward, and has largely made peace with being a lightning rod. Haasan is discovering what that feels like for the first time.

His track record until now had given him no reason to expect it. "When I made #90's, everyone praised me," he said. "The same happened with the Premalu Telugu dialogues. There has been no such negative thing in my career so far." By his own account, this is new territory, and he did not sound entirely prepared for it. "I thought my life changed upside down with one trailer," he admitted.

But he was not without support. Haasan pointed out that several reviewers had chosen to reserve judgment rather than pile on. "I am happy, as reviewers gave me the benefit of the doubt that Aditya Haasan won't go wrong," he said. "They have placed their trust in me, and hopefully, the film satisfies them."

What exactly triggered the backlash has not been spelled out in detail beyond the sexual content viewers flagged in the trailer cut. Whether that reflects the tone of the full film or a marketing choice that misjudged the moment is not something Haasan addressed directly, and it is worth remembering that a trailer is a two-minute pitch, not the movie itself.

He closed his remarks with something closer to a statement of intent than a defence. "I am definitely hoping that Epic makes sense to so many people," he said. "I am doing films to spread positivity and hope."

That is a fair distance from where the conversation around Epic started this week. Whether the film itself pulls the narrative back in his favour is now down to how audiences respond once it actually releases and the trailer stops being the only thing they have seen.