Highlights
- Shah Rukh's has been seen in two films this year - Dear Zindagi and Fan
- Raaes' release date was rescheduled to avoid clash with Sultan
- The Rahul Dholakia-directed film releases on January 26
New Delhi:
2016 would have been a 3-film year for Shah Rukh Khan, had his
Raees not been rescheduled to make way for Salman Khan's
Sultan. The trailer of
Raees will be revealed tomorrow and Twitter has been beside itself for some days now. #RaeesTrailerTomorrow trended all of Tuesday. Shah Rukh Khan, 51, has already been seen in
Fan (in which he played a double role) and
Dear Zindagi, with Alia Bhatt, this year.
Raees was originally meant to have released in July, when it would have clashed with Salman's
Sultan which had booked Eid. A possible Diwali date was also bypassed, averting a clash with Ajay Devgn's
Shivaay - which ended up colliding with the Karan Johar-made
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, in which SRK appeared in a cameo but which we aren't really counting as an SRK film.
Even without
Raees, it's been a year of multiple SRK sightings and so Twitter really should be able to cope. But it can't. Here's a tiny sample of the breathlessness:
Shah Rukh Khan has been contributing to the excitement by
tweeting Raees-related updates:
Raees, directed by Rahul Dholakia, stars Shah Rukh Khan as a liquor baron named Raees Alam and is set in the dry state of Gujarat. 'Raees bhai,' is what SRK's character is addressed in the film as. Nawazuddin Siddiqui stars in Raees as the police officer who brings 'Raees bhai' down. Here is SRK as the titular
Raees in the poster:
Raees also marks the Bollywood debut of
Pakistani actress Mahira Khan, who plays a character named Mohsina. Mahira recently revealed that her
mother had refused to believe that she had been cast opposite Shah Rukh Khan. Actress Sunny Leone appears in a special song sequence in the film.
For a while, it seemed that Shah Rukh Khan's
Raees had dodged two box office bullets in vain. Until recently, the film was releasing on the same day as Hrithik Roshan's
Kaabil and negotiations between the producers of both films - Hrithik's father Rakesh Roshan and the Farhan Akhtar-owned Excel Entertainment - had failed to produce a resolution. Just days ago, it was
announced that Kaabil will now release on the evening of January 25 while
Raees will open on January 26, the original date for both movies.