The filmmaker posted a collage of Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Vicky Kaushal smoking on their posters, questioning the point of anti-smoking disclaimers shown before every film.
Sanjay Gupta posted three posters side by side on Sunday and asked a question nobody in the industry seems keen to answer. Ranbir Kapoor in Animal, Ranveer Singh in Dhurandhar, Vicky Kaushal in Love & War, all lit up with a cigarette as part of the character's look. Gupta's caption cut straight to it: "What is the point of those unpleasant anti smoking reels we have to endure before and during films when these are the posters of the films (sic)?"
It's a fair jab. Every ticket buyer sits through that disclaimer, sometimes twice in one screening, warning that smoking kills. Then the film's own marketing puts a cigarette in a hero's hand and calls it style. Gupta's post landed on X and turned into exactly the kind of scrap that platform is built for, with users split on whether this is hypocrisy worth flagging or just people being precious about a prop.
One user tried to turn it back on him, bringing up Kaante, Gupta's 2002 heist film, and its song Rama Re, which has its own reference to cigarette smoke. Gupta didn't dodge it. He replied, "There were no non smoking ads then you genius (sic)." Whether that's a satisfying answer is up for debate, but the timeline has changed and he's not wrong about that either. The health warnings on screen are a newer requirement than the films some of his critics were citing.
The timing of Gupta's post isn't incidental. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting put out revised certification guidelines on September 18, and they go further than the smoking disclaimers everyone already knows. The updated framework brings in specific provisions around how narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances get shown on screen, alongside the existing categories of violence and sensitive subject matter. Recent reporting on those guidelines says films that show the use, consumption or trafficking of illicit narcotics will now need an anti-drug warning on screen, the same template used for smoking and alcohol.
So Gupta's complaint sits right at the edge of a bigger conversation the industry hasn't fully had yet. If the government is widening what needs a warning, someone was always going to ask why the marketing itself doesn't follow the same logic as the film. A poster isn't a scene, it doesn't carry a disclaimer, and it reaches people who never buy the ticket. Whether the Central Board of Film Certification or the Ministry has any appetite to extend rules to promotional material is a different question, and nobody official has weighed in on that yet.
For now it's a filmmaker asking an inconvenient question in public, three studios staying quiet, and a comment section doing what comment sections do. Whether Animal, Dhurandhar or Love & War change a single poster before their next promotional push is the thing worth watching.
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