By Ayesha Khan 
Mumbai, May 26: There is something almost poetic about the fact that a franchise built on the legend of a man nobody can catch has spent the better part of two years struggling to hold itself together. Don 3 was supposed to be Bollywood’s next big spectacle. Right now, it is Bollywood’s biggest headache.
On Monday, the Federation of Western India Cine Employees made it official. Ranveer Singh is banned. The organisation issued a Non-Cooperation Directive against the actor, which in plain language means that its members across 38 craft unions, more than four lakh workers in total, are now instructed not to work on any project involving him until he settles a financial dispute with the makers of Don 3. Producers Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani of Excel Entertainment are seeking Rs 45 crore in damages, money they claim was lost when Ranveer walked away from the film just weeks before cameras were supposed to roll.
It is the kind of moment that does not happen often in Hindi cinema. And how it got here is a story worth telling properly.
A Franchise, A Star, and Three Years of Uncertainty
Cast your mind back to August 2023. Excel Entertainment announced that Ranveer Singh would be the new Don, the iconic crime lord previously inhabited by Amitabh Bachchan and then Shah Rukh Khan. The internet had opinions, as it always does. Some fans were excited. Others mourned SRK’s absence loudly. But the project had momentum, and Ranveer, with his physical intensity and showman instincts, seemed like someone who could actually pull it off.
What nobody outside the production room knew at the time was how fragile the foundation already was.
Sources familiar with the situation say the project never quite found stable footing creatively. There was no bound script. Storylines were reportedly still unresolved well into the development phase. Ranveer’s team, by their account, waited for signals that the film was ready to move forward and those signals either came too slowly or not convincingly enough. According to reporting by Gulf News, the actor was also not paid an advance and received no compensation for other projects he had to shelve while remaining nominally attached to Don 3.
Then came a detail that, depending on which side you believe, changes the entire complexion of this dispute. It has been alleged that Excel Entertainment quietly explored other casting options, including Hrithik Roshan, before circling back to Ranveer following the runaway success of Dhurandhar in late 2024. Excel has not publicly confirmed this. But if true, it explains a great deal about why Ranveer’s commitment to the project reportedly cooled. Being someone’s backup plan after being their headline announcement is, to put it mildly, not the kind of professional treatment that inspires loyalty.
By April 2026, Ranveer was out. Formally, quietly, and then very loudly indeed.
Rs 45 Crore and a Complaint That Changed Everything
Excel Entertainment did not take the exit lying down. The producers filed a formal complaint with FWICE, claiming that by the time Ranveer walked away, the pre-production machinery had already consumed somewhere in the region of Rs 45 crore. Set designs, scheduling, logistics, crew costs. The kind of money that does not simply disappear into thin air when a film stalls.
Ashoke Pandit, chief advisor of FWICE, laid out the federation’s position at Monday’s press conference without any visible desire to soften the blow. Ranveer had exited approximately three weeks before filming was scheduled to begin, he said. That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a structural collapse at the worst possible moment, the point at which a production is most financially exposed and least able to pivot cheaply.
Three notices were sent to Ranveer Singh asking him to come and present his side to the federation. None were acknowledged. A fourth communication arrived, eventually, but it was not quite the reply FWICE was hoping for. Ranveer’s team wrote back to say that FWICE did not have jurisdiction over a contractual dispute between a star and a production house, and that the appropriate forum was a court of law.
That letter, according to Pandit, is what made the Non-Cooperation Directive inevitable. It was not purely about the money, he indicated. It was about the fact that the process itself had been dismissed.
“The federation sent letters and reminders to Ranveer Singh to come and share his side,” Pandit said at the press conference. “He chose not to reply to three notices.”
The Jurisdiction Question Nobody Agrees On
Here is where things get genuinely complicated, because Ranveer’s position is not without legal logic. A dispute over whether a star has breached a contract with a production house is, technically speaking, exactly the kind of matter that courts exist to resolve. FWICE is a trade body. It represents workers. It is not a civil court. Ranveer’s legal team saying the federation lacks jurisdiction over a contractual matter is not an outrageous position. In a strictly legal reading, it may even be correct.
But law and industry culture are not the same thing, and the film industry has always operated partly through informal structures of accountability. FWICE represents the cameramen, the spot boys, the light technicians, the set builders, the costume department. When a high-profile project collapses without warning, it is not just the producers who suffer. Those four lakh workers lose work too. The federation’s frustration was not purely on behalf of Farhan Akhtar’s bottom line. It was also on behalf of the people further down the chain who had no seat at the table when the decisions were made.
Still, the question of whether FWICE was the right institution to adjudicate this specific dispute is one that lawyers on Ranveer’s side will almost certainly continue pressing, possibly in court.
What Ranveer Did Next
The day after the ban was announced, Ranveer Singh was photographed at the airport. White kurta, black overcoat, sunglasses and a mask covering most of his face. He did not stop. He did not speak. Photographers called out to him and got nothing back.
His team, though, did put out a statement. It was measured and careful, the kind of statement drafted by people who are very aware of how each word will be picked apart. Respect for the film fraternity was expressed. The Don franchise was acknowledged. And the silence that preceded this statement, the statement explained, had been a deliberate choice, an effort to preserve dignity rather than pour fuel on an already burning situation.
What the statement did not do was address the Rs 45 crore claim directly. That number, and the question of who owes what to whom, remains the unresolved core of everything.
Fans online, for what it is worth, were broadly sympathetic to Ranveer. “We are with Ranveer Singh,” one comment read, as the airport footage circulated. Whether that public goodwill translates into meaningful industry support remains to be seen.
An Industry Argument Dressed Up As a Single Dispute
This is not really just about Don 3. It never was, fully.
The dispute reached the Producers Guild of India before it ever got to FWICE, which is itself an unusual escalation. Closed-door meetings were held. Senior producers and studio heads attended. The conversation was partly about this specific situation and partly about a broader anxiety that has been building for some time: what legal and financial protections exist for producers when a star, who has been part of a project’s development for months or even years, decides to leave?
Bollywood has historically run on trust and relationships. Formal contracts exist but the industry has never been great at enforcing them, particularly when the person being held accountable is a star with leverage. For decades, the reputational risk of being known as a difficult actor was sufficient deterrent. That deterrent, it seems, no longer carries the weight it once did.
Ranveer is not alone in that respect. Within days of this controversy cresting, Akshaye Khanna, who appeared alongside Ranveer in Dhurandhar, reportedly stepped away from Drishyam 3 over remuneration disagreements. Two high-profile exits from two different productions in the same week, involving stars from the same film. Whether that is coincidence or something more telling about the current mood between talent and producers is a question being discussed seriously in the industry right now.
The Franchise Left Without a Face
Don 3 has no lead actor. No production timeline. No announcement of what comes next.
Farhan Akhtar has made no major public statement on the casting situation beyond the briefest of acknowledgements that nothing is guaranteed in this industry until a film is actually made. He is not wrong. But the Don franchise, a property he has directed twice before, first with the 2006 reboot and then Don 2 in 2011, is now in a state of genuine uncertainty. The third chapter that was supposed to relaunch it for a new generation is stalled, entangled in a financial and legal dispute that neither side appears close to resolving.
For Ranveer, the timing stings in a particular way. Dhurandhar was the kind of success that shifts a career into a higher register. Coming off that, a ban from one of the industry’s most powerful bodies is not a narrative anyone in his camp would have chosen. The Non-Cooperation Directive means that any new film he attempts to shoot will face the immediate practical problem of FWICE-affiliated crew members being instructed not to participate. Whether that directive holds in practice, whether individual technicians comply or quietly work around it, is another matter. But the signal it sends to directors and producers considering working with him is unmistakable.
FWICE has said the door to a settlement remains open. Ranveer’s team has not publicly closed that door either. For now, that is about as much resolution as either side is prepared to offer.
A franchise that once had its lead character purring “no one can catch me” is sitting still, waiting for someone to make the first real move.
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Arun Upadhayay