Anurag Kashyap's Bandar lands on Zee5 on 28 August, after a theatrical run that barely cleared Rs 4 crore
Bobby Deol plays a fading TV actor accused of rape. The film premiered at Toronto last year and took about Rs 4.22 crore net in Indian cinemas.
Zee5 will stream Anurag Kashyap's Bandar from 28 August. The platform put the date on a poster this week with the line, "When a man is accused, is the verdict already decided?" The film had its world premiere at Toronto in September 2025 and opened in Indian theatres on 5 June, after an earlier 22 May date was moved.
Bobby Deol plays Samar Mehra, a fading television actor whose former partner accuses him of rape. The script, by Sudip Sharma and Abhishek Banerjee, follows the media frenzy, the legal case, and time in an overcrowded undertrial prison. Kashyap has said the story is still "relevant and worthy of discussion." Deol said the part "demanded a lot from me, not just as an actor, but as a person," and that Kashyap "never takes the obvious route." The cast includes Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad, Sapna Pabbi, Raj B. Shetty, Jitendra Joshi and Indrajith Sukumaran. Nikhil Dwivedi's Saffron Magicworks produced it with Zee Studios.
The theatrical run was small. Bollywood Hungama's India net total is Rs 4.22 crore, with a worldwide gross of about Rs 5.45 crore. The opening day was Rs 55 lakh. Trade coverage has treated that as a flop against a reported budget in the Rs 15 to 25 crore range. The film divided audiences when it was in cinemas. Promotional copy has placed it in the #MeTooForMen argument: what happens to a man when an accusation becomes the punishment before a court has finished.
A Kashyap film that dies in theatres and is reborn on Zee5 is the default setting for a certain kind of Hindi cinema now. The audience that would not buy a ticket will watch it on a phone, and the argument the poster is selling (is the verdict already decided?) will travel further than the box office did. I am not sure that is a cultural win. A film can ask a hard question about media trials and still be used as a blunt instrument in a gender fight it cannot settle. Maybe the streaming window is where that fight actually happens, because the comments section is the second screen.
28 August is a Friday. Watch whether Zee5 treats this as a quiet catalogue drop or as a campaign, and whether the same people who skipped the cinema show up to argue with it.