Shah Rukh Khan Ends Postponement Talk as Fiery New King Poster Confirms December 24 Release

Shah Rukh Khan settled weeks of postponement speculation on Tuesday in the most direct way a movie star can: with a poster. The new image for King shows the 60-year-old actor walking through flames, grey-haired and bearded, a gun in his right hand and a rose between his lips. His caption read, in Hindi, “Aaj fir yaad aaya... Qaatil nahi... Aashiq Hoon...” — today, the memory returned, he is not a killer but a lover — and it confirmed what fans most wanted to hear: the film is still arriving on December 24.

The date matters because this is a comeback three years in the making. Khan has not headlined a theatrical release since his extraordinary 2023 run of Pathaan, Jawan and Dunki, and King reunites him with Pathaan director Siddharth Anand, with Red Chillies Entertainment and Marflix Pictures producing. It also pairs him on screen for the first time with his daughter Suhana Khan, whose own acting debut came in 2023 with The Archies, while Khan himself was most recently seen in a cameo in his son Aryan Khan’s debut streaming series, The Bads of Bollywood. For Shah Rukh Khan, whose career has been built on reinvention, the family billing is itself a headline.

The supporting cast underlines the scale of the gamble. Alongside Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukerji, the film features Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Saurabh Shukla, Raghav Juyal, Jaideep Ahlawat and Abhay Verma. The title teaser, released last November to mark Khan’s 60th birthday, introduced his character as a widely feared former gangster known as King — a man whose violent past, the teaser suggested, is the story the film will have to reckon with.

Why this matters goes beyond one poster. The gun-and-rose image is a deliberate piece of shorthand: it marries the action hero Khan has become in the Pathaan era with the romantic hero who defined his early career, and the caption’s echo of his Baadshah days makes that bridge explicit. In an industry where a single poster can now set the tone for months of marketing, King is being sold not as a reinvention but as a reunion — of the star with his director, with his romantic image, and, most unusually, with his own daughter on screen. That is a lot of nostalgia to carry into a Christmas Eve opening, and it is exactly why the poster landed so loudly.

What to watch next: whether a full trailer follows quickly, and how the film handles a crowded festive corridor — Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three are both due on December 18, just a week before King. If the December 24 date holds, the opening weekend will test whether star power, family curiosity and festive footfall can outweigh two global blockbusters arriving first. For more star stories and career timelines, browse our Did You Know collection.