Kaabil vs Raees: Sanjay Gupta reconfirms release date

A day after Shah Rukh Khan said his upcoming film ‘Raees’ won’t clash with Hrithik Roshan’s Kaabil, the director of the film, Sanjay Gupta, has reconfirmed that the film will arrive on the same date as previously announced.

In a series of tweets, the director said:

“Dear All KAABIL releases on Jan 26, 2017. Absolutely no change in date. Hope this clears all unnecessary rumours.”

“Dear SRK fans There is no need to get hyper abusive. Calm down. Even I like him & will watch Raees whenever it releases.”

“SUPERSTARS get great openings irrespective of Public Holidays. Look at what happened this Wednesday.” he said.

Meanwhile, we’ve been informed that Rakesh Roshan has decided to stick to the Republic Day 2017 date, even if Excel Entertainment decide to release ‘Raees’ on the same day.

Those asking, Hrithik's Kaabil has not been postponed. Still scheduled for 26 January 2017.

— Indicine.com (@indicine) July 7, 2016

Celebrating Eid with the media yesterday, SRK spoke for the first time about averting the clash with Sultan and why they decided on releasing Raees next year.

“First of all, we weren’t ready with our film (Raees). I haven’t still given the last shot of Raees yet. We will shoot that now. Secondly, Salman and I spoke about it and we realised that we are at least 10,000 screens short of accommodating two films on the same day. Hence, we decided to come to a later date”

“We were looking at a number of dates to release the film this year but we could not because all of them were occupied. It would make no sense if we averted one clash for another one. It would mean like going out of the frying pan to the fryer. Then we decided on January 2017 as the release date”

“I knew Hrithik’s film was coming but he had not started the film then. We talked to Hrithik and Riteish (Sidhwani), Farhan are meeting him and Rakeshji on 11th or 12th this month. Then they will finalise on what’s to be done” Shah Rukh had said.