Renowned filmmaker-events Karan Johar notes that in modern Bollywood, PR has replaced talent as the primary driver of conversation.
Amidst media interaction he stated that in today’s landscape, everything is available for a price, making it difficult to gauge authentic audience reactions and encouraging actors to focus more on manufactured hype than their actual craft.
Johar further went on to explain that “everything is available at a price,” meaning compliments and stardom can be bought, reducing the value of organic publicity.
This refers to the extreme, often gimmicky, promotional tactics used by actors to stay in the news, which the filmmaker believes has gone into “overdrive”.
He also believes that this “marketing overdrive” makes it nearly impossible to tell if the audience genuinely connects with a project or is just reacting to paid hype, making it hard to trust the buzz. He also argued that actors and industry professionals should stop focusing on self-promotion and instead let their work and achievements speak for themselves.
Although he did not exclusively target any one individual, his comments came amidst a discussion mentioning current industry promotion tactics, including those used by actors like Janhvi Kapoor and Shanaya Kapoor.
Karan Johar’s remarks are part of a larger conversation about the need for authenticity and a shift back to focusing on talent over manufactured, paid buzz in the film industry.
‘Bollywood should stop doing PR’: Karan Johar urges actors to ‘let …
26 Apr 2026 — Karan Johar has stirred conversation by calling out the film industry’s growing dependence on PR tactics.
News Edit KV Raman
