Vipul Amrutlal Shah is no stranger to this game. When his 2023 film The Kerala Story hit theatres, it arrived wrapped in ban petitions, court hearings, and political condemnations from some of India’s most powerful voices. The result? A ₹221 crore net box office run on a ₹20 crore budget. Two National Film Awards. And a cultural conversation that refused to die.
Now the sequel is nine days away — and the controversy machine is already running at full speed.
CBFC Says Yes. Kerala’s CM Says No.
The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond has cleared its first official hurdle, receiving a U/A certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) ahead of its February 27, 2026 theatrical release. The sequel, directed by National Award-winning filmmaker Kamakhya Narayan Singh and featuring a fresh lead cast of Ulka Gupta, Aditi Bhatia, and Aishwarya Ojha, expands the original’s narrative across multiple states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala — following three Hindu women whose relationships allegedly spiral into coercion and forced conversion.
Within hours of the trailer dropping, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan took to Twitter with a pointed, personal rebuke. He called the first film “hate-mongering,” warned that the sequel was designed to “demonise our secular fabric,” and urged Kerala to reject it “with contempt.” Congress general secretary K C Venugopal followed suit on Facebook, accusing the makers of serving a “Sangh Parivar agenda” and specifically calling out a trailer scene in which a Hindu girl is shown being force-fed beef — which he called a calculated move to “hurt the conscience of the community.”
Here’s What Most Coverage Won’t Tell You
Most entertainment outlets are framing this as a simple controversy story — politicians vs. filmmakers, left vs. right, propaganda vs. truth. That’s the easy angle. But there’s a sharper, more revealing pattern at play here, and it has serious box office implications.
Look at the data: The Kerala Story (2023) opened to ₹6.75 crore on Day 1. The Kashmir Files — a film with a near-identical political DNA — was an even bigger phenomenon. But when The Bengal Files, a spiritual sequel to The Kashmir Files, released in 2025 with far less political fanfare, it opened to just ₹1.35 crore and closed around ₹15 crore net. The difference? Nobody prominent enough tried to stop it. Industry analysts at Pinkvilla now forecast The Kerala Story 2 to open between ₹1–4 crore a notably cautious projection that reflects exactly this uncertainty: does the controversy-to-ticket-sales pipeline still hold in 2026, or has the audience moved on?
The answer may have just arrived in the form of Pinarayi Vijayan’s tweet.
A Franchise That Was Secretly Filmed — And Is Now Very Publicly Debated
What makes the sequel’s production story equally fascinating is how differently it was made compared to its reception. The film was shot under extreme confidentiality, with a strict no-phone policy enforced for all cast and crew throughout the entire shooting schedule. The makers clearly anticipated the storm. And yet, from the moment the trailer landed, the storm arrived exactly on cue — with politicians, activists, and social media users lining up on both sides.
Supporters are calling the trailer a “brutal truth” and a “necessary wake-up call.” Critics are dismissing it as election-year propaganda. One social media user summed up the divide bluntly: “Biggest manipulation in the history of Indian Cinema.” Another countered: “Absolutely real thing.”
The Question Nobody’s Asking
Every major outlet is asking: Will this film get banned? Is this propaganda? Should it be made?
Here’s the question worth asking instead: Who benefits most from this controversy?
The makers filmed in secrecy, let the trailer do its work, and then watched India’s political establishment spend the next 48 hours amplifying their film to millions of people who may not have heard of it otherwise. The CBFC has certified it. The Supreme Court previously upheld the first film’s right to screen. And now, a sitting Chief Minister’s official Twitter account is driving traffic to a Bollywood movie trailer.
Whether The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond is truth, propaganda, or something in between — it is, without question, already being watched.
The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond releases in theatres nationwide on February 27, 2026. Directed by Kamakhya Narayan Singh. Produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah under Sunshine Pictures.
