The script is dead before the first draft even hits the cloud.

Rajkumar Hirani, the man who once convinced a billion people that an alien in a yellow helmet was the best way to critique organized religion, is sounding tired. He’s being asked the question every filmmaker with a brain is dodging lately: Could you make PK today? His answer was a masterclass in diplomatic exhaustion. "Anything you do, there will be comments," he told the press.

That’s a hell of an understatement. In 2014, PK was a box-office juggernaut. In 2024, it would be a forensic evidence file for a dozen different digital lynch mobs.

Hirani isn’t just talking about "comments." He’s talking about the machinery of modern outrage. We’ve traded the old-school censor board for a decentralized, algorithmic tribunal that never sleeps and never forgets. It’s not just that people are more sensitive; it’s that the tools we use to talk about art are designed to reward the loudest, most hysterical reaction possible.

Think about the friction involved in a production of that scale now. It’s not just the $15 million budget or the pressure of casting a superstar like Aamir Khan. It’s the "Risk Assessment" line item. You don’t just hire a legal team anymore; you hire a digital bomb squad. You have "sensitivity readers" for the script, "cultural consultants" for the costumes, and a PR team that spends six months pre-emptively apologizing for things the director hasn't even thought of yet.

Every frame of a movie is now a high-resolution screenshot waiting to be weaponized. In 2014, a joke about a fake godman was a satirical jab. In the current climate, that same joke is a 15-second TikTok clip stripped of context, blasted across WhatsApp groups, and used to demand a boycott before the trailer even drops.

Hirani’s brand of "feel-good" social commentary relied on a certain level of collective benefit of the doubt. He assumed the audience was in on the joke. He assumed we all wanted to be better. But the internet doesn't do "benefit of the doubt." It does engagement. And nothing drives engagement like a well-packaged grievance.

The trade-off is obvious. If you can’t poke the bear, you just stop making movies about bears. You make movies about superheroes. Or you make ultra-violent revenge fantasies where the morality is as simple as a punch to the throat. Those are safe. Nobody gets cancelled for a high body count, but everyone is terrified of a nuanced thought that might be misinterpreted by a bot farm in a basement.

We keep hearing about the "democratization of content." We were told that social media would give everyone a voice. It did. The problem is that the voice is mostly screaming "How dare you?" at anything that requires more than a two-second attention span. Hirani knows this. He’s seen the shift from the "Munna Bhai" days of earnest optimism to the "Dunki" era of calculated caution.

He didn't say it's impossible to make PK now. He just implied it’s not worth the headache. When every creative choice is filtered through the lens of potential litigation or a viral hashtag, the soul of the work starts to look like a focus-grouped mess. It’s the death of the "big idea" by a thousand tiny, digital cuts.

So, we get sequels. We get remakes. We get "safe" stories that don't challenge a single soul because the cost of being misunderstood is now higher than the cost of being boring.

If a director like Hirani—a man who has mints money for studios—is hesitant, what does that mean for the kid with a camera and a truly dangerous idea? They’ll probably just start a YouTube channel and hope the algorithm likes their face. Or they’ll just stay quiet.

After all, if you don't say anything, nobody can comment. Is that the "peace" we were looking for?