Recently, Samantha had acted in the movie Jaanu, the official Telugu remake of the 2017 Tamil romantic superhit 96 that had Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha in lead roles and director Premkumar himself had remade the movie in Telugu as well, with Sharwanand in Vijay Sethupathi's role.

Jaanu had received favorable reviews but could not succeed commercially, and after the box office verdict of the movie, many media portals were reporting that because of the flop, Samantha had been replaced by Aditi Rao Hydari in the upcoming movie Mahasamudram that also stars Sharwanand in lead role.

Quoting one such false report, Aditi Rao Hydari has come in support of Samantha, as she tweeted "I genuinely feel this is important to say... a hit or flop cannot take away the credibility of an actor. Pl Let’s not encourage this kind of thinking.secondly lets give a director/producer the respect to make their announcements in the way that they deem fit. Thank you".