The sequel is always a grift. Whether it’s a smartphone with a slightly faster chip or a propaganda flick with a higher budget, the goal is the same: extract maximum value from an existing grievance.
Enter The Kerala Story 2. Before a single frame has even flickered in a darkened theater, the All India Muslim Jamaat is already calling foul. They’re calling it a "planned effort to defame Muslims." They’re calling the narrative fake. They aren't exactly wrong, but they’re fighting a fire with a squirt gun in an era where the arsonists own the local water supply.
It’s a familiar script. The first film, released in 2023, didn’t just break the box office; it shattered the idea that mainstream cinema needed to bother with nuances like "verified facts" or "statistical probability." It claimed 32,000 women were recruited by ISIS—a number that eventually shriveled under legal scrutiny to just three. But the math didn't matter. The movie cleared over 300 crore rupees. In the attention economy, a 30,000% exaggeration isn't a lie; it’s an optimization strategy.
Now, the All India Muslim Jamaat is staring down the barrel of a second round. Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Bareilvi, the organization's president, is demanding a ban. He’s pointing at the "fake narratives" being spun to create a rift between communities. It’s a logical response to an illogical situation. But here’s the rub: in the current media ecosystem, calling for a ban is like pouring high-octane fuel on a marketing campaign. Every press release issued by the Jamaat is a free ad for the producers.
The friction here isn't just about religion. It’s about the price of social cohesion versus the ROI of rage. For a production house, the trade-off is simple. You spend a few crores on production, a few more on "controversial" PR, and you reap a windfall from an audience that’s been algorithmically primed to hate-watch or pride-watch anything that confirms their priors. The social cost—the actual, physical tension in neighborhoods—doesn't show up on a balance sheet. It’s an externality. Like carbon emissions, but for the soul.
We’ve seen this play out in the tech world for a decade. Platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) realized early on that "engagement" is highest when people are angry. The Kerala Story 2 is essentially a high-definition, two-hour version of a WhatsApp forward. It’s a payload designed to trigger the same amygdala response that keeps you scrolling at 2:00 AM.
The Jamaat’s complaint is that these films are part of a "planned effort." Of course they are. You don’t fall into a multi-crore film franchise by accident. It’s a business model. When the first film’s inaccuracies were exposed, it didn't hurt the brand; it hardened it. The fans didn't care about the "fake narratives" because the "vibe" felt true to them. We’ve entered a post-truth cinema where the feeling of being victimized is more bankable than the reality of the situation.
The tech-bro logic applied to culture is terrifyingly efficient. You identify a pain point—in this case, communal anxiety. You build a product that agitates that pain point. You wait for the "legacy" institutions (the Jamaat, the courts, the critics) to react. You use that reaction to prove your product is "dangerous" or "truth-telling." Then you cash the checks.
The All India Muslim Jamaat wants the government to intervene. They want the Censor Board to find a conscience. Good luck with that. In a market where outrage is the primary currency, a "clean" film is a failed product. The producers aren't trying to tell a story about Kerala; they’re trying to build a franchise out of friction.
What happens when the credits roll? The producers go to the bank. The politicians go to the polls. The rest of us are left to live in the wreckage of a social fabric that’s been shredded for the sake of a quarterly earnings report.
If the first movie proved that lies are profitable, the sequel is here to prove that they’re sustainable. Does anyone actually believe a ban will stop the signal, or are we just waiting for the inevitable announcement of Part 3?