interesting!!

Dev Patel of the $370 million (Rs. 1700 crore) grosser Slumdog Millionaire is a bigger international star than Shahrukh Khan

That brings the discussion to primarily in the domain of actors and leading men, of which Shahrukh Khan has been billed, by the media atleast, as the #1 leading man at the box office, a proposition that continuously falls on its face time and again. In fact Shahrukh Khan has repeatedly failed to measure up to the claim despite heavy political and media support for this actor over the past 15 years. To start off breaking this down before we do the lookahead, let's use a man he often used to compare himself to for these types of comparisions earlier, Amitabh Bachchan.

Today in his 60s, Amitabh Bachchan is a star who occasionally delivers hits like Black or Paa or Cheeni Kum. But Amitabh Bachchan was the undisputed superstar of the box office from January 1975 (when Deewar opened at 100% box office on 24th January 1975 and went on to run a platinum jubilee running next to Sholay later in the year) to January 1989 when after opening to 100% and a record box office response, Ganga Jamuna Saraswati crashed in its 2nd week. Still, even after the Ganga Jamuna Saraswati crash the biggest opener of 1989 was not Salman Khan's Maine Pyaar Kiya, or Anil Kapoor's Ram Lakhan but rather Amitabh Bachchan's Toofan. Similarly the biggest opener of 1990 wasn't Aamir Khan's Dil or Salman Khan's post-MPK release Baaghi or even Sunny Deol's Ghayal, but rather it was Bachchan's Aaj Ka Arjun. In 1991, the biggest opener was again Amitabh Bachchan's recordbreaking opener Hum. Even in the 'disputed' phase of his 'reign' as the superstar, he was delivering the #1 initials and remained the highest paid actor till 1998. But in most of the years between 1973-1992, Bachchan starrers were the top grossers and occasionally as happened to be the case in 1978, the top 4 grossers of the year (Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Don, Trishul, Ganga Ki Saugandh).

Now let's bring this back to Shahrukh Khan. Even in his prime, Shahrukh Khan was never the undisputed superstar unlike Amitabh Bachchan. Right after Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in 1998, his next: Baadshah, sunk; failing to take the top opening of 1999 and then flattening out. Shahrukh Khan was not in either biggest opener nor the biggest grosser of the decade of the 1990s nor of the 2000s. And many feel if he sustained near the top through the 2000s, it was more to do with fact that most of new entries of 2000s decade such as Vivek Oberoi, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, Ritesh Deshmukh, Abhay Deol were more there due to family labels and lacked either ambition or talent themselves. But despite this, Shahrukh Khan's films year in and out did not take the #1 initial. His biggest blockbusters were prone to being outinitialed or outgrossed by films of other 2 Khans, along with a Hrithik Roshan, Sunny Deol (circa Gadar) and couple others like Akshay Kumar later on. Now granted none of them went on to dominate box office themselves, but none of them go around claiming to be Kings or #1s either.

Which is exactly what the problem with Shahrukh Khan is and has been. Despite the Indian media collective and congress government literally taking the country's resources and putting it on the line for this guy, his biggest film ever, My Name Is Khan failed to open anywhere near the top, missing the top in opening at the box office by a distance and will have had a comparatively premature demise at the end also, causing many losses. By the end of the year, several films of several stars will leave box office collections of Khan in the dust.

And now after MNIK, Shahrukh Khan does not have any more releases coming up this year. He's 45 and it is difficult to see where his trajectory goes from here as he's facing a number of problems. Let's examine these problems in detail and regardless of political correctness.

Firstly though he aspires to be an international star, internationally he will never be reaching level of even a Dev Patel (of the $370 million grossing Slumdog Millionaire fame) let alone an Antonio Banderas in the 90s, a crossover star there, due to cultural reasons. A muslim chanting 'My Name Is Khan' was never going to become a big star in America, and only a deluded understanding of USA held by likes of Karan Johar would have imagined so. Johar's understanding of India itself is doubtful let alone America, Karan Johar is a bigger deal among industry tweeters than he is with Indian audiences. Which is why his Koffee with Karan or Lift Kara De end up getting lower TRPs in India than many other trivial shows. What is going to be an advantage in Karachi will be a disadvantage in mainstream Chicago or Chandrapur as we'll discuss below. America is a liberal country and tolerates muslims also, but it is not a foolish country, or unidimensional the way depicted in ridiculous bollywood cinema like Kurbaan and MNIK. These movies have no chance outside the usual Karan Johar/Khan segments from handful of countries settled as generation 1 migrants to USA.

So mainstream America is out for Shahrukh Khan. If the goal then is to become a middle eastern icon because of his proclivity to utter My Name Is Khan, then well there are a couple problems with that also. Culturally, the mid-east is not particularly homogeneously understanding of Hindi nor liberal enough overall which cinema needs. Secondly, and more importantly, a Qatar or a Baharain or even Pakistan, they are not all that consequential compared to India economically, let alone the west. If they were, they would have had their own established film industries by now. India is ahead of them all. It is the world's 2nd largest country by population and one of the major markets on earth, and will always be the dominant, determining market for Hindi films, with an economy that's outperforming the global recession and even some western countries. In Mumbai, many multiplexes' ticket rates are now about same as what US customers pay at US theaters. Ticket prices in even multiplexes like Indore, Madhya Pradesh and Kanpur are now substantial, except since Mumbai is quite saturated this is where the major theater economy growth will be coming in the years ahead. So if you keep your eye on the ball, the arrows are pointing towards the Hindi markets once more, and you can't ignore the audiences' sensibilities there.

Following off from that, secondly, because of the increasing cloud around his 'support for Pakistanis like Sohail Tanvir' politics, the middle India audiences are tuning Shahrukh Khan out. Especially middle class and mass screens Hindus (which were never particularly heavily in support of Shahrukh Khan cinema anyway). This is backed up by increasingly pedestrian TRPs when he is on television which is more dominated by this demographic. But bottomline is even at box office you can't get to those top all India initials let alone top overall grossers if the Hindis don't let you. It simply can't be done. It can work the other way (ex. Gadar) but not in this direction.

Finally his politics apart, the other big problem for Shahrukh Khan is now age, which is not on his side. He's closer to 50 than 30. An entire new generation of audiences has entered the theaters to whom overseas locales are no big deal, are much more confident about India (last year's big hits: 3I, Ajab Prem, Paa etc. all primarily set in India) and for whom Shahrukh Khan-Kajol movies like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai are themselves old, dated cinema.

This happens to all stars and aspiring superstars at some point. And there is nothing to be done about that. New stars are here and will come who will look, fresher, quicker, and more in tune with the times than Khan. And it will strike to him that people don't go to cinemas to watch khans. They go to cinema to get entertained. And accumulated hostilites from the Hindus, and accumulated wrinkles on the face, accumulated lack of speed brought on by the natural process of aging, tend to point to Shahrukh Khan's declining fortunes in the coming years. Not unlike an Anil Kapoor after the early-90s, if he's lucky.

The days of staking claim to the #1 superstardom for Shah Rukh Khan have been gone for a few years now and are probably gone forever. The question is how long can he delay the inevitable and remain a star.