Shah Rukh Khan handed Bollywood a full talking point on Tuesday with the first poster of King. The rugged, fire-lit look was meant to announce a December blockbuster, but within hours the internet was debating whether the frame is an homage, a copy or an AI-generated image.
The look that started it
In the one-sheet, a 60-year-old Khan wears grey hair, a beard and a distressed leather jacket, with his shirt unbuttoned. He walks with a gun in one hand and a red rose held between his teeth, emerging from what looks like a burning aircraft. The caption, Aaj phir yaad aaya… Qaatil nahi… Aashiq hoon…
, deliberately echoes the title track of Baadshah, giving older fans a nostalgia cue.
King is scheduled to release on December 24. It reunites Khan with Pathaan director Siddharth Anand and marks his first on-screen collaboration with daughter Suhana. The cast also includes Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukerji. After three theatrical releases in 2023, it is his return to the big screen after a three-year gap.
King is also a family milestone: it follows Suhana’s debut in The Archies, which was panned critically, and Khan was last seen in a cameo in his son Aryan Khan’s series The Ba***ds of Bollywood.
Why Dhurandhar 2 entered the chat
Users quickly set the King image beside Dhurandhar: The Revenge, the Ranveer Singh spy blockbuster that earned over ₹1,800 crore globally. The official Dhurandhar poster shows Singh’s Hamza Ali Mazari walking toward the camera in dark clothing against a burning building. The visual rhyme — star, fire, debris, a slow walk — made the comparison almost instant.
Some users called the poster “cheap AI-generated slop.” Others asked why the team did not seem to copy “properly” and pointed to Donnie Yen’s 2021 film Raging Fire, which has its own flaming-frame imagery. Praise and criticism sat side by side: many fans were already projecting a ₹100 crore India nett opening for the film.
What this tells us about poster marketing
Action one-sheets work on shared grammar. The lone hero walking out of a blaze is a mass-market shortcut, not an invention; when a recent ₹1,800 crore blockbuster owns the same language, the boundary between “homage” and “template” gets blurry. The AI allegations add a second risk: an audience that doubts the craft starts discussing the production, not the film.
The smartest way to see this moment is as a campaign beat, not a verdict.
- The callback: the tagline points to Shah Rukh’s own film history, which is safe territory.
- The frame: the burning-aircraft walk is built for mass action fans.
- The risk: familiarity flips into copy-and-AI chatter when the reference points outside the film.
The next glimpse from King will either give the image its own context or keep the Dhurandhar comparisons running. For now, the poster has done one thing absolutely: it made December 24 feel closer and noisier.
Source: Hindustan Times
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