Manoj Bajpayee has spoken for the first time in detail about the controversy that forced his Netflix thriller to be renamed from Ghooskhor Pandat to Gajab Raat, explaining that the objections came from people who had neither seen the film nor watched its trailer and were reacting entirely to a title they found offensive. The film premieres on Netflix on Friday, after a months-long legal and public battle that involved an FIR, a Delhi High Court order, a Supreme Court directive and the complete withdrawal of all original promotional material.

Manoj Bajpayee said the title simply did not sit well with a section of the audience and the reaction was immediate and intense. “Somehow the title didn’t go well with some segments of the audience. There were some objections to it,” he said in an interview with Zoom.

He revealed that the team acted quickly.…