Dunki vs Salaar: Karan Johar changes the release date of Sidharth Malhotra-starrer Yodha out of respect for Shah Rukh Khan, Prabhas

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Earlier this week, the industry was left stunned as the makers of Salaar decided to release the Prabhas-starrer on December 22 and thereby clash with Shah Rukh Khan’s highly awaited film, Dunki. The action flick was initially scheduled to release on September 28. Now that it got pushed to the Christmas week, it has had an effect on the other releases of the month as well.

Dunki vs Salaar: Karan Johar changes the release date of Sidharth Malhotra-starrer Yodha out of respect for Shah Rukh Khan, Prabhas

Bollywood Hungama has learned that Yodha, which is scheduled to release on December 15, will move to another date. A source told Bollywood Hungama, “Yodha is produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Karan realized that it’ll be difficult for Yodha to retain screens in the second week once Dunki and Salaar arrive in cinemas. Moreover, it’ll become challenging even for Dunki and Salaar’s distributors since theatres would not want to lose out on Yodha, especially if it does well.”

The source continued, “Karan Johar has a long association with Shah Rukh Khan, which is well known. Also, he’s close to Prabhas as well since KJo presented Baahubali series in Hindi. Hence, out of respect for Shah Rukh Khan and Prabhas, he has decided to bring Yodha on some other date.”

It is not yet clear if Yodha will be postponed to 2024 or whether Karan will prepone it to December 8 or some other date in November. A clearer picture is expected to emerge in a few days.

Yodha stars Sidharth Malhotra, Disha Patani and Raashii Khanna. It is directed by Sagar Ambre and Pushkar Ojha. Incidentally, it was earlier supposed to release on September 15. It was pushed to December 15 again due to Shah Rukh Khan since the superstar’s Jawan took the September 7 slot.

An industry insider commented, “There are murmurs that Dunki might release on Thursday, December 21. If the film is released a day before in the international markets, then ideally it would be released earlier in India as well. In such a scenario, Yodha would have got just 6 days to score before the clash of the biggies.”

Yodha is not the only film that was going to be released on December 15. The Katrina Kaif-Vijay Sethupathi starrer Merry Christmas, too, has booked the December 15 date. It now remains to be seen if the makers of the Sriram Raghavan-directorial also change their date or if they decide to come a week before Dunki and Salaar, as planned.

Also Read: Prabhas starrer Salaar confirmed to clash with Shah Rukh Khan starrer Dunki on December 22; Hombale Films release new poster