Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap aimed jibes at each other through hilarious billboards, here is why

• Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap, who have a long-complicated-history, were seen engaging in a Twitter war.
• Now, these Bollywood stars have placed billboards in Mumbai taking a jibe at each other.
• Here is the marketing ploy behind it.

Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap, who were seen engaging in a Twitter war last week, have now taken their feud a step ahead by putting up billboards in Mumbai aiming direct snipes at each other.

The veteran actor Kapoor took a dig at filmmaker Kashyap for his ‘dark movies.’

The billboard placed in Juhu read, “Juhu leads to Andheri. Anurag's movies lead to andhera (Anurag's films lead to darkness)."


Kashyap also responded with a billboard that read,“Yeh circle gol hai. Anil ki acting lol hai (This circle is round and Anil's acting is to be laughed at)."

However, this is all just a creative stunt for Netflix’s upcoming film AK vs AK.

To make people stop and take notice, Netflix’s billboards did not feature its logo, film’s title or brand name. And unlike its usual communication pieces, these billboards did not even follow Netflix’s colour scheme. It got rid of the red and just went ahead with plain monochromatic billboards. The de-branding was an effort to make the conversation appear more real and create intrigue. The campaign also seems to have a two-forked aim of retargeting Kashyap and Kapoor’s audience and to attract new ones. It is conceptualised and executed by Zoo Media Network's The Rabbit Hole.

Netflix is known for its disruptive approach when it comes to Out-of-Home advertising. To promote its series Ghoul starring Radhika Apte, the OTT platform superimposed the ‘Ghoul symbol’ on the OOH sites where it promoted Sacred Games.


The OTT giant has been going all out to promote AK vs AK. It smartly announced the launch of its film via Twitter first. The Bollywood stars’ engaged in a Twitter banter and had internet users scratching their heads, again with no mention of the film or brand. Some media organisations even fell for the marketing ploy. After the conversation triggered some buzz on Twitter, Netflix dropped AK vs Ak’s trailer.

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The recent bullet in this war is a ‘diss-track’ fired by Kashyap.

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Kashyap and Kapoor have a long-complicated-history in real life. Before Kashyap made it in the industry, he wanted to make two movies Allwyn Kallicharan and Grant Hotel with Kapoor. However, the projects did not see the light of the day and the two stars drifted apart.

In a recent interview with Press Trust of India, the two said that they have left behind their tense history of unfulfilled projects to come together for AK vs AK.

Netflix thought of a clever ruse to take advantage of their tense history and translated it into a film.


AK vs AK, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, will premiere on Netflix on 24 December.