Director Vikram Bhatt, whose films have ran into censorship hurdles in the past, had a tough time with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for his upcoming flick, Raaz Reboot. He concedes that the cuts they asked for the Emraan Hashmi-Kriti Kharbanda-Gaurav Arora-starrer left him flabbergasted.

The CBFC told the filmmaker to cut down the usage of the 'F' word from 32 to 16. The original scene in question features a possessed Kriti screaming the 'F' word at Emraan and Gaurav in a satanic kind of succession. Vikram says the reason given to him was that '32 is too much and can't be allowed'.

In another instance, the trailer, which was given a 'U/A' rating for theatres, was given an 'A' rating for television. The director asked his promo makers to study horror shows on TV and cut the trailers accordingly. “Out of the three 20-second promos that we sent to the Censor Board, one was given 'U/A' and the other two were rated 'A'. I was appalled,“ he recalls.

Having had to water down the trailers considerably for a 'U/A ' rating for TV, Vikram admits, “I cannot showcase the horror film unless I use a videosharing site. But there is a huge audience out there that doesn't even visit the site. How do I reach them?“