Double SRK bonanza for small screen?

Feb 7, 2008 Arpana

New Delhi, Feb 8 (IANS) Small or big screen, Shah Rukh Khan is the king. He acts, dances, plays host - in short he is a true entertainer. After being on a winning spree with two blockbusters "Chak De! India" and "Om Shanti Om", he turns to television this year with two game shows.

The first one is tentatively titled "Bade Hue to Kya Hua", which is formatted on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader", a US-based game show featuring adult contestants facing questions picked directly from the textbooks of first to fifth graders.

It will be aired on STAR Plus. "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader" is very popular abroad and is running in 50 countries.

Produced by Siddharth Basu's Synergy Adlabs, this is Shah Rukh's second game show for the company after the hugely successful "Kaun Banega Crorepati 3" (KBC) for the same channel.

"Shah Rukh will be hosting the Indian version of 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader', the biggest reality show of the past year in the US, which will be produced by Synergy Adlabs," Basu, head of Synergy Adlabs, earlier told IANS.

Reports suggest that Shah Rukh will also host the fourth season of KBC.

"We don't know when KBC is going to happen. It might come after 'Bade Hue to Kya Hua' or the end of the year. According to the contract signed between Shah Rukh and STAR, he will finish the series he has signed for," said a source close to STAR Plus.

For his first stint on KBC, Shah Rukh apparently got Rs.10 million per episode, but his remuneration for the new show is still under wraps.

Not only in films and television, he is an even bigger king of the advertising world. The superstar has paid an advance tax of Rs.270 million ($6.8 million) on his estimated income during the current financial year of 2007-08, but a major share of it has gone into paying for his income from endorsing a slew of products and other sources.

Sources in the advertising agency for which the superstar has worked reveal that his income from endorsements fetches him Rs.1.5 billion ($38 million) a year, the highest for any Indian advertising "model".

Apart from that Shah Rukh is the costliest celebrity guest. When actors like Malaika Arora Khan, Dia Mirza and Isha Koppikar charge nearly Rs.1 million to perform at a marriage, the Badshah of Bollywood charges Rs.10 million to just grace the function and add glamour.

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