Good news, everyone: Shah Rukh Khan is coming back for more YRF spy action.
The YRF Spy Universe (so named because of production company Yash Raj Films) is one of the biggest action franchises in the world, with a combined gross of about $300 million. That makes it the second most lucrative movie franchise in the history of Indian cinema, following S.S. Rajamouli’s excellent Baahubali movies.
Building from 2012’s Ek Tha Tiger to 2023’s explosive blockbuster Pathaan, the series has amped up the budgets and excitement over the last decade, culminating in the blockbuster adventure Pathaan, the fourth movie in the series. A fifth installment, Tiger 3, is already planned for a November release, and now Variety confirms a sixth movie will reunite Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan in Tiger vs Pathaan, with filming starting in January 2024.
Salman Khan’s RAW agent Tiger was the star of the first two movies in the franchise — Ek Tha Tiger and Tiger Zinda Hai — and will also be the main character of the upcoming Tiger 3. War (which featured one of the best music numbers you’ll ever see) was the third installment, and starred Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff, who have not appeared in any of the other movies in the franchise.
Shah Rukh Khan, a global megastar who is among the most popular actors of the last 50 years, made his lead acting return in Pathaan after a few years on hiatus. In Pathaan, SRK’s exiled agent Pathaan teams up with Tiger in a dynamic action scene set on a train, and at the end of the movie, the two lament that no one else can be trusted to protect India. Pathaan has been the most successful Indian movie at the 2023 box office so far this year.
That would seem to signal a future team-up once again, but the title of this upcoming project is a curious one. Will Tiger and Pathaan be pitted against each other? Is this a Batman v. Superman situation? We’ll just have to wait and see.