SRK+: How Shah Rukh Khan tricked everyone into believing he was launching his own OTT app

Turns out Bollywood's King Khan was only playing with people's minds in association with Disney+ Hotstar.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan teased an OTT venture on Tuesday, garnering congratulatory messages from friends and fellow fraternity members. He took to Twitter to share an announcement poster, which read “SRK+, coming soon”. 

The 56-year-old, who has been away from the big screen since 2018’s Zero, wrote alongside the tweet, “Kuch kuch hone wala hai, OTT ki duniya mein (Something is going to happen in the world of OTT).” Salman Khan shared Shah Rukh’s post writing, “Aaj ki party teri taraf se @iamsrk. Congrats on your new OTT app.” While Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap tweeted, “Dream come true! Collaborating with @iamsrk on his new OTT app, SRK+.” Shah Rukh’s frequent collaborator and friend Karan Johar also congratulated writing, “Biggest news of the year! @iamsrk, this is going to change the face of OTT. Super excited!”

But Bollywood's King Khan and his production banner Red Chillies Entertainment did not confirm whether SRK+ was indeed an OTT platform, or simply an ad campaign for an existing OTT service.

Well, turns out everyone fell for a gimmick, because today, Disney+ Hotstar launched a commercial featuring Shah Rukh and Anurag. The commercial sees the prior asking the latter to share story ideas for new projects but as he shares his ideas, SRK shows how they're already on Disney+ Hotstar.

An earlier report in ETimes had suggests that Shah Rukh's poster is simply a lead to an upcoming ad campaign for Disney+ Hotstar. Provided he has been shooting lots of ads with and for the streaming service. News18 had also quoted a source as saying, “One wonders how and why there was so much of guesswork being done regarding Shah Rukh’s poster. A right official announcement may soon be in the offing.”

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