KING Poster: Shah Rukh Khan Is a Lover, Not a Killer, in Fiery New Look Ahead of December 24 Release

Shah Rukh Khan has unveiled a new poster for KING, and it distils the film’s pitch into a single image. Shared by the actor on Tuesday, October 27, the poster shows Khan walking out of the flaming wreckage of a cargo plane, gun in hand, a red rose held between his lips, his face and chest marked with blood. Dressed in a dark, rugged shirt and jacket with tousled silver-blonde hair, he stares down the camera as fire curls around him.

The caption did much of the talking. Khan wrote, “Aaj phir yaad aaya… Qaatil nahi… Aashiq hoon…” — today I remembered again, I am a lover, not a killer — a deliberate nod to his 1999 hit Baadshah. A new theme tune titled ‘King Is Back’ accompanies the poster reveal. The line reframes the character at the centre of an action spectacle: violent, but romantic at heart, and it leans directly on the screen image Khan built across three decades of romantic blockbusters before Pathaan turned him into an action star again.

KING reunites Khan with director Siddharth Anand after Pathaan (2023). The film is produced by Gauri Khan, Siddharth Anand and Mamta Anand under Red Chillies Entertainment and Marflix Pictures, from a story by Sujoy Ghosh, with a screenplay by Anand, Ghosh, Suresh Nair and Sagar Pandya and dialogues by Abbas Tyrewala. Sachin-Jigar have composed the songs, while Anirudh Ravichandran has created the score. The ensemble cast includes Suhana Khan, who makes her theatrical debut sharing the screen with her father, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan as the antagonist, Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor, Jaideep Ahlawat, Abhay Verma, Arshad Warsi and Raghav Juyal. The makers have held firm on a December 24, 2026 release, in the Christmas Eve window, despite speculation about crowding from major international titles.

Here is the Filmverse take: this poster is doing the work a trailer usually does. With two months to go, the campaign is selling attitude and identity rather than plot — the rose against the gun is the whole argument for KING in one frame. It also shows how carefully the film is positioning Khan himself: not as a generic action hero, but as the romantic superstar playing at being dangerous, which is a far more distinctive promise. The risk is that posters can only carry a campaign so far; the eventual trailer will have to prove the film has a story to match the swagger. For now, though, the “lover, not a killer” line has already done its job — it has the internet quoting a 27-year-old song lyric back at its own star.

Sources: Bollywood Hungama, Filmfare, Cinema Express, Hollywood Reporter India