Station Bollywood

What Next for the King Khan????

Those close to Shahrukh Khan say there's a strong desire within this actor to please. Summing up this admirable quality, he admits, "I'm an actor and I'm always entertaining. I'm a court jester. But my acting is for real. I'm on 24 hours. The only time I don't act is when I'm sleeping. But I'm genuine, I don't fake my emotions. I can't dissociate from acting anymore. You can take me out of the actor, but you can't take the actor out of me."

His career isn't just limited to acting though as is obvious from the number of ventures he is involved in.

Small or big screen, life or cricket, advertisements or endorsements, Shah Rukh Khan is the king. He acts, dances, plays host and has a dominating presence - in short he is a true entertainer who stays on in the mind long after he fades off the screen. After being on a winning spree with two blockbusters "Chak De! India" and "Om Shanti Om", he turns to television this year with two game shows.

The first one is tentatively titled "Bade Hue to Kya Hua", which is formatted on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader", a US-based game show featuring adult contestants facing questions picked directly from the textbooks of first to fifth graders. Produced by Siddharth Basu's Synergy Adlabs, It will be aired on STAR Plus.

"Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader" is very popular abroad and is running in 50 countries. Shah Rukh will be hosting the Indian version of 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader', the biggest reality show of the past year in the US, which will be produced by Synergy Adlabs," said Basu, head of Synergy Adlabs.

"Bade Hue to Kya Hua" is Shah Rukh's second game show for the company after the hugely successful "Kaun Banega Crorepati 3" (KBC) for the same channel. Reports suggest that Shah Rukh will also host the fourth season of KBC.

"We don't know when KBC is going to happen. It might come after 'Bade Hue to Kya Hua' or the end of the year. According to the contract signed between Shah Rukh and STAR, he will finish the series he has signed for," said a source close to STAR Plus.

For his first stint on KBC, Shah Rukh apparently got Rs.10 million per episode, but his remuneration for the new show is still under wraps.

Not only in films and television, he is an even bigger king of the advertising world. The superstar has paid an advance tax of Rs.270 million ($6.8 million) on his estimated income during the current financial year of 2007-08, but a major share of it has gone into paying for his income from endorsing a slew of products and other sources.Sources in the advertising agency for which the superstar has worked reveal that his income from endorsements fetches him Rs.1.5 billion ($38 million) a year, the highest for any Indian advertising "model".

Apart from that Shah Rukh is the costliest celebrity guest. When actors like Malaika Arora Khan, Dia Mirza and Isha Koppikar charge nearly Rs.1 million to perform at a marriage, the Badshah of Bollywood charges Rs.10 million to just grace the function and add glamour.

And now Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta will take on each other on the cricket field this April. Both the Bollywood stars have bought a team each auctioned by the BCCI for the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL). Shahrukh won the bid for the Kolkata team for a sum of $75.09 million while Preity Zinta and her boyfriend Ness Wadia won the bid for the Chandigarh team for $76 million.

The tournament will feature eight teams representing eight cities in Indian. The teams will play T20 tournament involving foreign players as well. Shahrukh Khan who is a cricket fan had run into controversy with the BCCI after they alleged him of using cricket to promote his movies. The actor had swore not to enter a cricket stadium. The BCCI had had apologised to the star. Though Shahrukh Khan was interested in the Mumbai team he was edged out by Reliance Industries MD Mukesh Ambani who won the bid for $112 million.

When discussing his venture into the sphere of producers, together with actress and close long-time friend Juhi Chawla, and the man whom both of them consider to be a father figure, Aziz Mirza, he has shown himself to be very diplomatic.

"The logic of Dreamz Unlimited is not to make money but to make different films," he states matter-of- factly. "It should be a little bit different from what others are doing. If I find that everyone is opening a toy store, I would like to open a toy store with one special toy which nobody has. The idea is to make the kind of programmes that we would like to watch, programmes which don't insult your intelligence."

To date, Dreamz Unlimited has brought lovers of the Hindi cinema three films. Chronologically they are, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000), Asoka (2001), and Chalte Chalte (2003).

Notwithstanding an enviable fan following abroad, the Bollywood superstar feels that "there is no place" for him in Hollywood or European cinema and says that he was more keen on taking the Indian cinema to the global audience. "There is no place for me in the Hollywood or in the European cinema. I would like to continue to work in India and to take the Indian cinema to the outside world," SRK, who was given a rapturous reception in Berlin as he made his debut at the Berlin Film Festival to attend the German premiere of his latest blockbuster Om Shanti Om , said at a press conference.

As German fans drooled over Shah Rukh Khan, the national media shed its perceptions of "bullock cart India" and trained its attention on the Bollywood superstar when he landed here, with one journalist even saying "he is as popular as the Pope".Some German television channels suddenly turned their cameras from the Hollywood glitterati to Khan as excited fans let out loud shrieks to greet him at the Berlinale Friday night.

Some channels narrated details of Khan's personal life, his wife Gauri and their two children.

The German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which was highly critical about India and Indians until the mid-1990s, when the world began to notice the South Asian country's economic and technological prowess, said that many people from all over Europe had descended on Berlin to see their favourite star.

"He is as popular as the Pope, but he (Khan) has more sex appeal," wrote Ekkehard Knoerer in the Berlin tabloid Die Tageszeitung, while trying to capture the mood at the Berlinale.

"The IT revolution and Bollywood have together contributed to a vastly improved image of India's prowess," said Rudolf Schweizer, a German businessman who frequently visits Bangalore and Hyderabad to oversee work contracted to Indian companies."India, along with China, is seen as an economic powerhouse and one of the two fastest growing economies of the world," he added.

Shah Rukh Friday also announced that he had plans to direct a film in Berlin, but admitted that he had no concrete dates for the shooting.

The superstar said he was humbled and touched by the interest in his films and in the Indian cinema shown by film enthusiasts in Germany.

Now where next shall the King Khan pop up?????