Director of ‘The Kerala Story’ Sudipto Sen has broken her silence on Bollywood’s most talked about fall behind the scenes. The filmmaker claimed that producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah He ‘lied’ about his reasons for walking out of ‘The Kerala Story 2’ and revealed that it was because he refused to do a film based on ‘WhatsApp forwards’.
Sudipto Sen explains why he quit ‘The Kerala Story 2’
In an interview with the Free Press Journal, Sudipto Sen, who spent a decade researching the original film, said he was comfortable making claims only about Kerala, a subject he knew deeply. The problems started when the scope of the sequel expanded beyond that. “Vipul Ji decided that Kerala Story 2 will not be just a Kerala story. It will be the story of Rajasthan; it will be the story of Madhya Pradesh. So I came out then because it is a very sensitive subject…Kerala, I know. I worked for 10 years. I can prove every word I said about Kerala. But Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, my knowledge is about WhatsApp forwards and newspapers, and I don’t want to make films on WhatsApp forwards,” he said.
Sudipto Sen talks about producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah
While Sudipto Sen clarified that he continues to respect producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah personally, he did not hold back from being offended by the producer’s public version of events. The filmmaker said, “Later I saw that Vipulji said something which is a lie… He should have told the truth but he chose to lie because maybe he was not sure about the second part. When everyone’s watching you, you should be careful.”Reports had earlier suggested that Shah had described the script of Sen’s sequel as “rough”, a claim that added fuel to an already public lawsuit.Sen admitted that he was not surprised by the latest film. He also took issue with the broader “love jihad” narrative. “I didn’t like it, actually. I also have a problem with the word ‘love jihad’ because historically India is a place where Hindus and Muslims live together. A Hindu marrying a Muslim or a Muslim marrying a Hindu is not a new thing in India. It is part of our cultural beauty.”He added, “My problem was the manipulative conversion. If it’s love, then where does the conversion come from? Kareena Kapoor didn’t change her religion, did she?” he said
More about “The Kerala Story 2”.
‘The Kerala Story’, released in 2023, became one of the most controversial films of the year, dealing with the issues of religious conversion and radicalisation. Sen wrote and directed the first episode, which performed brilliantly at the box office despite polarizing critical and public opinion. ‘The Kerala Story 2’ was directed by Kamakhya Narayan Singh. The film opened in theaters on February 27, 2026.
