Sudhir Kothari, 36, a monetary analyst and adviser primarily based within the southern Indian metropolis of Chennai, has ordered a particular five-kilogramme (11-pound) choco-truffle cake, garlands and booked dhol (drum) gamers. The T-shirts, badges and wristbands that he had ordered arrived in time and Rohini Silver Screens theatre has allowed him to erect a 7.4-metre (25-foot) cutout of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan for the particular 9am “First Day, First Present” of Dunki, Khan’s new movie that releases worldwide on Thursday.
A diehard “SKRian”, as Khan’s followers name themselves, Kothari informed Al Jazeera that in 2013, three to 4 days after “SRK sir began following me, I turned my private Twitter account right into a fan membership.” As we speak his deal with, SRKChennaiFC, has 167,600 followers.
Kothari, who prefers the appellation “The Solely Fan SRK Follows” to his personal identify, and has written a guide of the identical title, was busy till late Wednesday night overseeing the preparations on the theatre, booked for SRK followers after submitting a help letter from SRK’s manufacturing staff. After garlanding and pouring milk over Khan’s cutout, they are going to gentle fireworks and dance.
Contained in the 550-seater theatre, too, they are going to dance, minimize the cake and submit movies on their handles with rapturous adjectives and hashtags like #DunkiReview, meant to tickle the curiosity of potential ticket patrons.
In all probability, Khan, who has 43.9 million followers on X and follows 74 folks, of whom 5 are fan accounts, will acknowledge the celebration movies with a candy thanks and #Dunki.
Yash Paryani, the admin of SRK Universe, Khan’s greatest fan membership which has 3.2 million followers on Fb, tweeted that for December 21, followers are organising “1,000+ first day, first reveals in 65 nations”.
Rishil Jogani, who mentioned he’s a part of “a small group of admins of Khan’s fan golf equipment that takes some large choices”, informed Al Jazeera that “these numbers usually are not one hundred pc correct,” however followers and fan golf equipment submit them as a result of “euphoria could be very contagious. There’s FOMO [fear of missing out] and it motivates folks to guide tickets.”
All of the followers Al Jazeera spoke with mentioned that they “don’t get a penny” or any free tickets, they usually do all this out of their love for Khan, hoping for one finish outcome: “For SRK movies to do wonders and for him to be joyful”.
Dunki, not like Khan’s two multi-star, action-packed hits launched earlier this yr, is using totally on Khan’s shoulders and can check his box-office clout. To arrange for that, he has spent months advertising it in a method that resembles the election marketing campaign model of India’s governing right-wing Bharatiya Janata Occasion, the very social gathering he has had a number of run-ins with up to now. However it isn’t clear if all this effort will repay this time.
Hopes for a hat-trick
This yr has been a really joyful one for Khan, 58, who returned to theatre screens after a four-year hiatus, a string of flops and a large private setback.
His two movies — Pathaan, which was launched in January this yr, and, Jawan [Soldier], in September — have been blockbuster hits, and have made it to the highest 10 highest-grossing Indian movies ever. With Dunki, trade insiders mentioned, Khan is hoping to attain a hat-trick.
The yr of Khan’s final box-office hit, 2015, was additionally the yr when he known as out rising spiritual intolerance within the nation, ruffling the feathers of the governing right-wing Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP). A concerted backlash adopted, his movies have been trolled and threatened with requires boycott, and it appeared that he had misplaced his box-office mojo after three flops and two that did middling enterprise.
In 2021, through the pandemic, his then-24-year-old son Aryan Khan was arrested, together with seven others, in an alleged drug bust on board a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast. The younger Khan was charged with possession, consumption and sale of unlawful substances and needed to spend about three weeks in jail. Seven months later, all the fees have been dropped.
Khan has all the time been outspoken and doesn’t scare simply. He as soon as reportedly informed off a Mumbai mafia boss who was pressuring him to behave in a movie, “Shoot me if you wish to, however I received’t be just right for you. I’m a Pathaan,” referring to the proud, warrior clan that he’s a descendent of.
His public appearances all the time sparkled along with his signature repartee. Nicely-read and sharp, he gave candid interviews and would seem repeatedly on actuality and comedy TV reveals, particularly whereas selling his movies.
However after his son was arrested and makes an attempt have been allegedly made to extort cash from Khan, he went quiet and retreated from public view. He made no assertion on his son’s arrest and the allegations in opposition to him, and stopped assembly the press or making appearances on TV reveals.
The one connection he continued to take care of was along with his followers, on-line and offline and in the present day it is without doubt one of the greatest and most energetic fan communities of a Bollywood star.
When Pathaan was launched in January, Khan’s followers the world over purchased 50,000 tickets for the primary day, first present, mentioned Paryani. For Jawan, they beat their very own report and purchased 85,000 tickets.
With a complete gross incomes of 21 billion rupees ($253m) on the field workplace, Khan is now being credited for reviving Bollywood, which had been struggling for a success for the previous couple of years.
“There’s a effectively thought out technique behind what we have now seen — Shah Rukh Khan as a phenomenon in 2023,” Girish Johar, producer and movie enterprise knowledgeable, informed Al Jazeera. “The movies have been positioned, marketed and launched in such a fashion that his fan base, box-office numbers and his craze will increase daily, with each movie,” he mentioned.
Pathaan, a multi-star movie with large Bollywood stars like Deepika Padukone, John Abraham and Salman Khan, was launched on India’s Republic Day weekend in three languages on a lot of screens domestically and abroad.
Jawan, by Atlee, a number one Tamil director, had some large southern Indian stars who’ve a large fan following in India and overseas.
“Hindi movies used to clock [250 million to 300 million rupees; $3m-3.6m] within the south. Jawan was the primary Bollywood movie which has executed [700 million to 800 million rupees; $8.4m-9.6m] enterprise within the south,” Johar mentioned.
Khan’s followers are upbeat about Dunki, whose title refers back to the “donkey route” used to smuggle folks from the subcontinent to Europe. “The movie’s content material will communicate for itself,” they are saying and are targeted on making certain that the movie, made on lower than one-third of Jawan’s price range, beats it on the field workplace.
Business insiders are sceptical that may occur as a result of, not like Khan’s two motion movies this yr, Dunki is an emotional drama about unlawful migration from Punjab to the UK, and in India today, motion scores over emotion.
2023: Shah Rukh Khan’s reinvention
In 2016, Khan, usually known as the “King of Bollywood”, ranked number-one with a model worth of $131.2m in Duff & Phelps’s superstar valuation report. By 2022, he had dropped to the number-10 place with a worth of $55.7m in 2022.
“2023 could be outlined because the yr of Shah Rukh Khan’s reinvention,” PR veteran and picture guru Dilip Cherian mentioned, explaining how Khan took cost of his “reinvention” by doing three issues.
For one, Khan, identified for taking part in romantic leads, targeted on aligning his movies with the temper of the nation by opting to play characters that have been all about “heroism, machismo and nationalism”.
“Take any of the large marquee movies within the final one yr — the entire movies have featured males with weapons on posters,” mentioned Rohini Ramnathan, a radio jockey who anchored Khan’s birthday celebrations on November 2 with followers.
The second factor that Khan did was to retain management of his model, picture and the narrative about him by “completely abandoning the mainstream media”, Cherian mentioned. That ensured he didn’t should reply any questions or lose his cool with journalists as had occurred up to now and that it was all a one-way messaging push.
And third “is the encompass sound that’s created by his visits to spiritual shrines, to matches on the just lately concluded Cricket World Cup, look on the premiere of his daughter’s movie — this offers you [Khan] content material to play with within the media” as movies of those outings have gone viral, and been coated by the mainstream media.
To advertise Dunki, Khan, who’s the model ambassador of UAE’s Burjeel Hospital, toured Dubai just lately, however has not executed any occasion in India.
He has been repeatedly posting promotional materials on social media, together with on X the place he interacts repeatedly along with his followers by way of “Ask Me Something” periods. He principally avoids crucial questions, selecting fawning or humorous tweets to which he responds with jokes, compliments and digital hugs. Sometimes, he’ll name out abusive ones with tongue-in-cheek responses. A number of this banter finally ends up as tales on information websites.
“Replying to folks one-on-one takes braveness and lots of pondering … That possession is magical. And he’s doing this with common frequency. That begins altering the vibe,” mentioned Neeraj Joshi, head of promoting at Zee Studios, which produces, distributes and markets movies and TV reveals. “It’s strategic and half of a bigger sport, however it is usually actual to an important extent,” he added.
Behind this echo chamber chatter, the on-ground and on-line promotion of his movies that’s seemingly entrusted to followers, is shrewd enterprise planning backed by knowledge, perception into shopper behaviour, a strong movie distribution and exhibition plan by a staff that features his spouse, Gauri Khan. She and Khan are administrators of Purple Chillies Leisure, a manufacturing home.
Delhi-based Narrative Analysis Lab, which makes use of AI to review the impression of social media conversations, analysed 310 tweets by Khan from September 16 to November 12 at Al Jazeera’s request and located that the tweet with the very best variety of likes was the one during which Khan posted a photograph of Lord Ganesha with greetings on the event of a Hindu pageant.
Final week, Khan visited two Hindu shrines and movies of each went viral on social media.
The tweet that had the second-highest engagement was when Khan thanked his followers for gathering outdoors his home to want him on his birthday.
“In some ways,” mentioned Sundeep Narwani, co-founder of Narrative Analysis Lab, “Shah Rukh Khan’s rebranding and movie campaigns are just like an election marketing campaign…. They’ve learnt that they should battle again.”
Khan has plotted his blockbuster return with the depth, prudence and calculation normally seen in political comebacks. And there are a number of uncanny similarities between what he’s doing and the way the BJP conducts its election campaigns, from counting on loyalists on the bottom, controlling the narrative by bypassing the mainstream media to constructing a personality-focused cult following.
‘Milk’ his fandom
In the previous couple of months, there was a surge within the variety of clips of Khan on social media, particularly Instagram. Collectively, they create a really particular picture of Khan as a humorous, clever and humble man, however with rockstar swagger.
There are clips of him being respectful to girls, being a caring father and husband, regaling audiences with self-deprecating humour, sharing life classes with college college students and smiling as followers bathe him with compliments and love.
What’s conspicuously lacking from this curated gallery of movies are Khan’s political statements, bouts of anger at reckless selfie-seeking followers, fights with co-stars, and alleged affairs.
“It’s a really deliberate try and churn out content material that makes him look very cult-like,” mentioned Narwani.
Final month, to have fun Khan’s birthday, his staff booked an auditorium in Bandra, house to many prime Bollywood stars in Mumbai, and invited about 300-400 members of his varied fan golf equipment after vetting them.
The occasion was organised like every Bollywood leisure gala, with an anchor, a script, and background dancers to accompany Khan on stage. He spent three to 4 hours entertaining them, speaking to them and clicking pictures. There was additionally cake, meals and items.
“This time they gave backpacks,” Paryani mentioned. Final yr was smartwatches.
The backpack, with #SRKDay embossed on it, had a quote from Khan printed on it: “By no means cease dreaming.”
“Shah Rukh Khan speaks to the aspirational essence that’s inside each Indian,” mentioned Kenneth Hopkins, the founding father of BollyCon, a popular culture conference in Mumbai.
“Khan’s attraction lies within the story he tells — I got here to Mumbai with nothing and take a look at me in the present day, I personal the trade … If his followers are shopping for into his model and model sentiment of aspiration, then you definitely even have to precise hubris … hubris in opposition to injustice, the system,” mentioned Hopkins and added, “On the finish of the day, Shah Rukh Khan is a baniya [an Indian trading community] … I don’t imply to be offensive, however he’ll see how you can milk that … [for] conversion into ticket gross sales.”
Whereas Pathaan was a very patriotic movie, Jawan was political and private, with Khan taking part in a double position of a father and son.
When the movie’s trailer was launched, all consideration was on one dialogue that was akin to the emotion famously expressed by Liam Neeson within the 2008 movie, Taken: “Bete pe jane se pehle baap se baat kar [Talk to me before you touch my son].”
“What occurred to his household was so, so brutal. And all of us simply needed him to win … His profitable was like a private triumph for everyone. It felt just like the world is alright,” Ramnathan mentioned.
If Dunki breaks box-office data, it’ll be a contented finish to yr for Bollywood, courtesy Khan. It it doesn’t, it received’t matter a lot as a result of for Khan a battle had been fought and received.
From disapproval to admiration
Dunki is about within the north Indian state of Punjab the place many houses have overhead water tanks formed like planes, American milk vans, and even the Statue of Liberty. They signify the place a member of the family has migrated to.
Within the movie, made by Rajkumar Hirani, one among India’s main administrators, Khan performs the lead character, Hardy, who takes his 4 mates to London by way of the unlawful and treacherous “donkey route”. Indians make up the world’s greatest diaspora inhabitants of about 17.9 million and the movie’s theme appeals to Indians at house and overseas.
Hirani is taken into account infallible on the field workplace and has his personal fan following. However Dunki’s benefit and drawback is Hirani.
In 2014, Hirani directed PK, starring Aamir Khan as an alien who lands in India and begins to query the blind religion and devotion to spiritual gurus. The movie has remained one of many highest-grossing movies, however is dredged up time and again by right-wing trolls to label him as anti-national and name for a boycott of his movies.
In 2019, Hirani was accused by a lady who had labored with him of sexual assault and abuse over a six-month interval. Hirani denied the allegations, however the girl stands by her account. Dunki is his first movie since then.
The sexual harassment case in opposition to Hirani has not the precise wing as a result of a number of BJP leaders have been accused of comparable abuse. However each few days there’s a name on X to boycott Hirani and Dunki over PK.
In keeping with Narrative Lab’s evaluation, on November 2, when Khan tweeted the primary promotional video of Dunki, he tagged Hirani. About 7 p.c of the feedback the tweet acquired have been damaging.
Khan tweeted 4 extra promotional movies over 10 days, however didn’t tag or point out Hirani.
“The disapproval that we had seen in feedback across the November 2 tweet disappeared by the fifth tweet,” Narwani mentioned.
Al Jazeera reached out to Purple Chillies to ask if on-line interplay between Khan and Hirani was being prevented to minimise any damaging chatter. They declined to reply.
“The correct wing wants some rationale, some story for a boycott name to stay. And Shah Rukh Khan, by not speaking, isn’t giving them something,” Narwani mentioned.
