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Actor Yami Gautam on Thursday shared a hard-hitting note on social media, urging the Hindi film industry to put an end to what she described as a growing culture of paid hype and targeted negativity. In her post, the Haq actor mentioned Dhurandhar—directed by her husband Aditya Dhar—and hinted that the upcoming film may be facing an orchestrated “cancel culture” narrative ahead of its release.

Yami criticised the practice of paying certain groups to manufacture buzz or to suppress negative chatter. She alleged that some individuals and platforms “continuously write negative things until you pay them,” calling the trend “nothing but a kind of extortion.”

She wrote, “There is something I’ve been wanting to express since really long… This so-called trend of giving money, in the disguise of marketing a film, to ensure good ‘hype’ for a film or else ‘they’ will continuously write negative things—feels nothing but extortion.”

The actor, whose performance in Haq earned wide appreciation, said the normalisation of toxic PR—both hype-building and negative attacks—is hurting the craft of filmmaking itself.
“Just because this arrangement is accessible to anyone—whether to ‘hype’ a film or spread negativity against another actor or a film—is a plague that is going to affect the future of our industry in a big way,” she wrote.

Calling it a “monster of a trend,” Yami warned that this culture could eventually “bite everyone,” including those who currently benefit from it. She also pointed to the widening gap between real success and the manufactured, superficial success celebrated in recent years.
“If truth is exposed about a million things under the garb of who and what ‘success’ is over the past five years, it’s not going to be a pretty picture for many,” she added.

While Yami stopped short of naming individuals or organisations, her remarks have sparked speculation about whether Dhurandhar may have been targeted by rival PR fronts. With the film set to release soon, her post has amplified an industry-wide conversation on ethics, manipulation and the need for unity among filmmakers.