Names are cheap, until they aren’t.

For the last year, "The Kerala Story" wasn't just a movie title. It was a blunt-force trauma instrument used in prime-time shouting matches and WhatsApp group wars. It was a brand. Now, Vipul Amrutlal Shah wants a sequel, but there’s a glitch in the software. The state of Kerala wants to be called Keralam.

It sounds like a minor patch update—adding an ‘m’ at the end to satisfy linguistic pride and decolonial aesthetics. But for a film franchise that built its entire identity on a specific, provocative brand name, this is a metadata nightmare.

Let’s be real. The first film didn’t make 300 crore because of its cinematography. It succeeded because it turned a geographical location into a horror trope. It weaponized a name. Now, the Kerala Legislative Assembly has passed a resolution to officially change the state's name to Keralam in the Constitution. If the Center clears it, Shah is left holding a bag of outdated hashtags.

Marketing an "outdated" brand is a tax nobody wants to pay. Imagine trying to sell "The Twitter Story" six months after Elon decided we’re all living in X. The friction is real.

In the world of SEO and algorithmic dominance, "The Kerala Story 2" is a goldmine. People search for the state; they find the film. It’s a parasitic relationship that works beautifully for the box office. But if the world starts typing "Keralam" into their search bars, Shah’s sequel risks becoming a legacy product before it even hits the screens. He’s looking at a choice: stick to the old name and look like a stubborn outsider, or pivot to the new name and lose the brand equity he spent millions to build.

There’s a specific price tag to this kind of confusion. Digital ad buys are predicated on keyword dominance. If the official narrative shifts to Keralam, the cost-per-click for "Kerala" might drop, but so does the relevance. You don’t want your movie title to sound like a history book from 1994.

The friction here isn't just about phonetics. It's about the "Coffee Shop" test. If you’re standing in line at a theater in Kochi or even Mumbai, does saying "I want two tickets for The Keralam Story" carry the same visceral, jagged edge as the original? It doesn't. "Keralam" feels internal. It feels like home. "The Kerala Story" feels like an exposé written by someone peering through a fence. The sequel depends on that "outsider looking in" energy.

Shah is a smart guy. He knows that the controversy is the product. But usually, you want to control the controversy. You don’t want the government to change the dictionary on you while you’re mid-production. If he keeps the name "The Kerala Story 2," he’s doubling down on a version of the state that the state itself is trying to delete. It’s a branding collision that will cost millions in redirected PR.

Then there’s the international market. Global audiences don't care about the nuances of Malayalam grammar. They know "Kerala" as the place with the backwaters and the political friction. Changing the title for the sequel to "The Keralam Story" would require a massive re-education campaign. You’re essentially asking your audience to learn a new word while you’re trying to sell them a ticket. That’s a trade-off that usually ends in a box-office dip.

The irony is thick enough to choke on. The film’s detractors will argue that the name change is a move toward reclaiming identity. The film’s producers will likely see it as a nuisance to be bypassed. But you can't bypass the algorithm. If the world moves to Keralam, "The Kerala Story" becomes a ghost of a previous internet era.

Maybe Shah will lean into it. Maybe he’ll claim the "Kerala" name is the "true" one, creating a meta-controversy about the name change itself. It’s a classic move: when the facts change, turn the change into a conspiracy.

But at the end of the day, a movie is a product sitting on a shelf. If the shelf gets relabeled, the product starts to collect dust. Shah has to decide if his brand is strong enough to survive a rename, or if he’s just going to keep yelling the old name at a crowd that’s already moved on to the next tab.

It’s funny, really. For a film that claimed to tell the "truth" about a state, it might end up being defeated by a single letter.

Does a brand exist if the thing it’s named after stops using that name?