Diljit's Film Got Pulled in 48 Hours... Ranveer's Getting Blacklisted.What Is Going On In Bollywood?

 

Two completely different controversies, same industry, same week of Bollywood group chats going absolutely feral. Let's get into both.

 

 

So Diljit Dosanjh's Satluj finally dropped uncut on ZEE5 India after literally three plus years stuck in censor board purgatory, 127 demanded cuts at one point, that's not a typo. The film's about Sikh activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, the man who exposed mass extrajudicial killings in Punjab. Heavy subject, important story, finally out in full. And then... 48 hours later, gone. Pulled from the Indian catalogue entirely. ZEE5's official line was some vague "current developments" statement, no actual explanation given. It's still up on ZEE5 Global for international audiences, so it's not like the film vanished, Indian viewers specifically just got cut off.

 

Diljit's own comment on the process was heavy too, he told Variety India he needed a week off after filming just to mentally come back from playing Khalra, the emotional weight of the character stuck with him longer than expected. So this wasn't some quick paycheck role for him, this was clearly something he cared about getting right. The bit that's making people the most annoyed online is the comparison game. Films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, The Bengal Files, and Kerala Story 2 are all still sitting comfortably on the same platform, and those have been widely called out by critics for leaning into a specific political narrative. So when a film about state violence against Sikhs gets yanked within two days while other politically charged films stay up without issue, people are, understandably, asking questions about consistency.

 

Worth remembering too, this isn't even Diljit's first ban rodeo. His last film Sardaar Ji 3 never even got a release in India after backlash over him casting Pakistani actress Hania Aamir, following the deadly Kashmir attack that spiked India-Pakistan tensions. Film bodies called it "a betrayal of the nation," some even pushed for him to be fully banned from the industry. So this is officially pattern number two for Diljit specifically running into the censorship machine, back to back.

 

Completely different flavour of drama here. This one's not political, it's contractual and messy in that classic Bollywood boardroom way. Ranveer was locked in to play the lead in Don 3, Farhan Akhtar directing, Excel Entertainment producing, announced all the way back in August 2023 with big fanfare. Fast forward to December 2025, weeks before principal photography was set to start, Ranveer's side starts cancelling rehearsal dates, and eventually he exits the project entirely. Excel had reportedly already sunk somewhere around 45 crore, roughly 4.7 million dollars, into pre-production by that point.

 

FWICE, the big film workers federation, did not take this lightly. They slapped Ranveer with a non-cooperation directive, basically telling their members industry-wide not to work with him until he explained himself. Other actors have quietly exited projects before without this level of fallout, so a lot of people online flagged that this response felt disproportionately harsh, while others in the industry felt it was necessary to protect crews and productions from last-minute chaos like this. Ranveer himself has stayed almost completely silent through the whole thing, his team's official statement basically said he'd rather handle this with "dignity, maturity and mutual respect" than play it out in public. Reports even suggest he's planning to stay off interviews entirely for around 18 months, essentially riding it out until his next film Pralay releases.

 

Eventually FWICE actually walked back the non-cooperation directive after Ranveer's legal team sent them a notice challenging it, with groups like CINTAA, IMPPA and the Producers Guild stepping in to broker some peace. FWICE's own president said "no one has won or lost," which, sure, but the actual financial dispute with Excel is still unresolved behind the scenes.

 

Diljit's situation is about art running into political sensitivity and inconsistent censorship. Ranveer's is about money, contracts, and an industry union flexing its power over a star who allegedly broke the unspoken rules of professional conduct. Different problems, same underlying theme though... Bollywood in 2026 is figuring out, in real time and in public, exactly how much power different people get to hold. Who gets protected, who gets punished, and who decides which stories are even allowed to exist on screen in the first place.

 

-Devangshu Purohit