King vs Avengers Doomsday: Can Marvel's Biggest Film Dent Shah Rukh Khan's Christmas Release?

Short answer: Avengers: Doomsday will take screens from King in its first week, but it is unlikely to change the size of King's box office run. The two films arrive six days apart, they draw largely different audiences, and Shah Rukh Khan has spent three decades proving that his films find their crowd, clash or no clash.

Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday opens on Friday, December 18, 2026, alongside Dune: Part Three. Siddharth Anand's King follows on Thursday, December 24, a day before Christmas. Below we look at what the clash really means for King at the box office, in India and overseas.

King vs Avengers: Doomsday: quick facts

	King	Avengers: Doomsday
Release date	Thursday, December 24, 2026	Friday, December 18, 2026
Director	Siddharth Anand (Pathaan)	Anthony and Joe Russo
Lead cast	Shah Rukh Khan, Suhana Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone	Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal
Languages	Hindi, plus Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English dubs	English, plus Indian-language dubs
Distribution	Pen Marudhar (India), Yash Raj Films (overseas)	Disney
Reported budget	About ₹350 crore	—

What the clash actually means for King

The honest effect of Avengers: Doomsday on King is a screen-sharing issue, not an audience issue. Doomsday and Dune: Part Three will hold a large share of multiplex screens, IMAX and premium formats in their first week. When King arrives on December 24, Doomsday will be entering its second week, so exhibitors will have to split shows between three big films over the Christmas weekend.

Trade voices largely agree on this. Chennai-based trade tracker Ramesh Bala has said the December 18 clash will tighten premium screens in the opening week, but that King's later date could work in its favour if the Hollywood films are front-loaded. Distributor and exhibitor Vishek Chauhan has pointed to Barbie and Oppenheimer running side by side as proof that audiences will watch more than one big film in the same window, and noted that Avengers and King have very different sensibilities.

That last point is the key one. A Marvel film draws its biggest numbers from English-speaking multiplex audiences in metros. A Shah Rukh Khan action film draws from every segment: metros, mass centres, single screens, families and the diaspora. The overlap exists, but it is far smaller than the headline "clash" suggests.

Shah Rukh Khan's record in clashes

Shah Rukh Khan's films have repeatedly delivered big numbers even when they shared the screen with major rivals, and even when reviews were mixed.

SRK film (year)	Clashed with	Reception	Result
Dilwale (2015)	Bajirao Mastani, same day	Poor word of mouth	About ₹148 cr India nett and one of the year's biggest overseas grossers
Raees (2017)	Kaabil, same day	Mixed	About ₹137 cr India nett, a clear success
Dunki (2023)	Salaar, a day later	Mixed	About ₹211 cr India nett and over ₹450 cr worldwide

Each of these came against a film with its own strong pull, and each one held its ground. Dunki is the closest parallel to King's situation: a Christmas-week release, a pan-India rival in Salaar, a divided critical response, and still a total that most Hindi films would count as a career high.

Even outside clashes, the pattern holds. Happy New Year (2014) drew poor reviews and still crossed ₹200 crore India nett. To be fair, word of mouth does still matter, as Zero (2018) showed. But the floor for a Shah Rukh Khan event film is higher than for almost any other star in the country.

The Pathaan and Jawan factor

King is not a regular Shah Rukh Khan release. It is his first full-scale action film since Pathaan and Jawan in 2023, the two biggest films of his career, each of which crossed ₹1,000 crore worldwide. Together they reintroduced him to a younger audience as an action star, and that is the version of Shah Rukh Khan King is built around.

• The director: Siddharth Anand made Pathaan, the film that began this phase of Shah Rukh Khan's career.
• The cast: Suhana Khan's first big-screen role opposite her father, with Abhishek Bachchan as the antagonist, Deepika Padukone, Rani Mukerji, Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff, and an extended cameo from Ranveer Singh.
• The scale: a reported budget of about ₹350 crore, with dubbed versions in four South Indian languages and English.

For audiences in India, this is an event film in its own right, and event films are chosen for themselves, not as an alternative to whatever else is playing.

Overseas: King's strongest territory

If Doomsday has an edge anywhere, it is overseas, where Marvel dominates premium screens. But overseas is also where Shah Rukh Khan is strongest among Indian stars. His films have long led the Hindi box office in the Gulf, the UK, the US and Canada, and Pathaan and Jawan pushed those numbers to new highs.

King's overseas release is handled by Yash Raj Films, the same banner that took Pathaan worldwide. The diaspora audience that turns out for a Shah Rukh Khan film on Christmas is a loyal, repeat-viewing audience, and it is not the same crowd queuing for a Marvel film.

The calendar works for King

• Doomsday gets a week alone: most of its fans will have watched it by the time King opens, which is how Marvel films usually play in India.
• King opens into the holidays: a Thursday release leads straight into Christmas Day, the weekend, and the year-end holiday week.
• A long clear run: no major Hindi release is expected until January 21, so King has close to a month to build on word of mouth.

Screens will free up as Doomsday and Dune: Part Three settle into their second and third weeks, which is exactly when a Shah Rukh Khan film typically sees its strongest family footfall.

Our verdict: can Avengers: Doomsday impact King?

Not in any way that will define King's box office. Doomsday will likely take a share of premium screens and some metro multiplex shows in King's first weekend. That may trim the opening at the margins. It will not decide the lifetime run.

What will decide it is the film itself. Shah Rukh Khan brings an audience no Hollywood release can draw away, and his record in clashes shows that this audience turns up even when reviews are divided. If King lands with audiences, Christmas 2026 has room for both films. On our site, King's verdict will be based on India nett, as with every film we track.

King box office: frequently asked questions