There was a time when a film’s biggest flex was the film itself. A gripping trailer, a chartbuster soundtrack, a couple of television interviews and word of mouth did the rest. Today, a Bollywood marketing campaign begins months before release. Airport looks become content. Gym sightings become headlines. Every teaser gets a reaction video. Every behind the scenes clip is analysed frame by frame. Somewhere between viral reels and influencer screenings, marketing has stopped selling movies and has started trying to become the movie.
Which made me wonder. Can you PR your way into a blockbuster?
If there was ever a film that could answer that question, it is Alpha.
Long before audiences knew what Alpha was actually about, they already knew everything surrounding it. It was the first female-led film in the YRF Spy Universe. It starred Alia Bhatt and Sharvari. It promised a new chapter for one of Bollywood’s biggest cinematic universes. There were rumours, leaks, carefully timed promotional drops and endless social media discourse. Yet somehow, despite all the noise, one thing remained strangely absent.
Excitement.
Not curiosity manufactured by Instagram algorithms. Genuine anticipation.
That distinction matters.
Because Alpha did not arrive during the golden years of the YRF Spy Universe. It arrived at a moment when audiences had already begun questioning whether the franchise had become too comfortable repeating itself. The formula that once felt thrilling now felt familiar. The larger than life introductions. The globe trotting missions. The convenient twists. The patriotic monologues. The surprise cameos designed more for franchise building than storytelling.
The YRF Spy Universe was once Bollywood’s answer to Hollywood franchises. Today, many viewers argue it has become Bollywood’s safest creative template. Critics and audiences repeatedly pointed to the film prioritising spectacle over screenplay, with several reviews calling the writing predictable despite the scale of production.
That conversation only intensified because Alpha entered cinemas after Dhurandhar had completely changed audience expectations.
Whether one personally loved Dhurandhar or not is almost beside the point. Its biggest achievement was reminding audiences that spy films could still surprise them. They could feel researched. They could look grounded. They could build tension instead of relying solely on expensive action sequences.
Suddenly, people were comparing everything.
And Alpha suffered because of it.
Interestingly, the comparison was never officially encouraged by the studios. It happened organically across Reddit, X and YouTube. Thousands of viewers began framing the conversation as old versus new Bollywood. One popular Reddit thread described Alpha as falling back into “the same old Spy Universe template” despite stronger visuals, while another argued that Dhurandhar felt like a filmmaker trying to tell a story whereas Alpha felt assembled from franchise checklists.
Of course, comparison alone cannot explain everything.
The more fascinating conversation surrounded Alia Bhatt’s PR.
Few actors in Bollywood have faced as much discussion around publicity strategies as Alia. Every performance is dissected. Every award sparks debate. Every film announcement becomes an online referendum on privilege, merit and marketing.
With Alpha, that scrutiny became even louder.
To be clear, there is nothing unusual about aggressive promotion. Every major star does it. Shah Rukh Khan does it. Ranbir Kapoor does it. Deepika Padukone does it. The difference is that Alia’s campaigns often become part of the story themselves.
Instead of discussing the film’s espionage plot, social media frequently found itself discussing magazine covers, carefully curated interviews, airport appearances, behind the scenes content and the sheer scale of visibility surrounding the project.
It created an unusual paradox.
The harder the internet felt the film was being sold, the more some audiences resisted buying into it.
That phenomenon is hardly unique to Bollywood. Marketing fatigue is becoming increasingly common across entertainment. Audiences today are extremely media literate. They can identify coordinated campaigns almost instantly. Sometimes that works in a film’s favour. Sometimes it creates scepticism before anyone has even purchased a ticket.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Alpha was timing.
Officially, the film had already experienced multiple release delays before finally arriving in theatres, with YRF citing post production and scheduling changes.
Unofficially, online conversations developed a completely different theory.
Across Reddit and film communities, many users argued that once Dhurandhar shifted expectations for spy action cinema, Alpha suddenly looked like a film made for an older version of Bollywood. Some even speculated that no amount of editing or post production could fundamentally change a movie that had already been conceived under a different creative philosophy. Those remain audience opinions rather than verified production facts, but they became an enormous part of the public conversation surrounding the release.
And perhaps that is where Alpha’s biggest problem lies.
The conversation stopped being about Alpha.
It became about everything around it.
It became about whether the YRF Spy Universe had lost its edge.
It became about Alia Bhatt’s public image.
It became about Bollywood’s dependence on cinematic universes.
It became about whether PR can manufacture audience love.
Even the trolls became predictable.
Every teaser generated accusations of copying Hollywood. Every action scene became another opportunity to compare it with Dhurandhar. Every interview was interpreted as damage control. Before audiences had fully watched the film, social media had already decided what narrative it wanted to tell.
Ironically, none of this changes one important fact.
Alpha is not the commercial disaster many predicted. Despite polarised online reactions, the film has continued to perform respectably at the box office, crossing major collection milestones within its opening week.
Which raises another uncomfortable truth.
The internet is loud.
The box office is often quieter.
Reddit threads, X discourse and Instagram comment sections create the illusion that everyone shares the same opinion. They rarely represent the entire audience. A film can be relentlessly trolled online while simultaneously attracting paying viewers.
Perhaps that says something about us as much as it says something about Bollywood.
We have reached a point where marketing campaigns are analysed like election strategies, PR teams are discussed almost as much as directors, and fan wars sometimes overshadow the films themselves. The promotional cycle has become its own form of entertainment.
Maybe Alpha is less interesting as a movie than as a case study.
A case study in how modern Bollywood PR, social media discourse, Reddit criticism and franchise fatigue collide before opening weekend has even ended.
Because once upon a time, audiences walked into theatres wondering whether a movie would be good.
Now they walk in wondering whether the internet was right.
And perhaps that’s the real Alpha question. Not whether PR can sell a blockbuster, but whether, in trying so hard to control the conversation, Bollywood has forgotten that the only campaign audiences have ever truly trusted is a genuinely great film.