Shah Rukh Khan-Deepika Padukone's King leak goes viral: Are fan pages bigger than official promotions now?

Leaked visuals from the South Africa schedule of King, featuring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, went viral online; Siddharth Anand requested fans not to circulate such visuals to preserve the film’s cinematic experience. Once upon a time, Bollywood controlled the first look. A poster was planned. A teaser was timed. A still was approved. A magazine cover was negotiated. A campaign was built week by week, sometimes month by month. The audience saw what the studio wanted them to see, when the studio wanted them to see it. That world is gone. The King leak controversy proves it. One leaked visual from a foreign schedule can now do what crores of marketing money once did. Ignite national conversation before the makers are ready. Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone’s leaked visuals from the sets have sent fans into overdrive, while director Siddharth Anand’s appeal not to circulate them has raised a larger question: in today’s cinema ecosystem, are fan pages more powerful than offici...

Saw X review – torture porn horror returns with more blood, less value

Stomachs will churn once again in an attempt to rewind the clock for the fatigued franchise but there’s ultimately little of worth here

It’s a strange existential feeling to be seated in front of a Saw film once again, a return not just to a franchise but an entire torture porn subgenre. As a screaming woman is forced to cut off her leg and suck out a litre of blood from her fresh wound in order to save her head from being sliced off by serrated wire, one might start wondering the hows and whys of what got us here.

While financial greed is the obvious studio motivator (cheaply made horror still the most reliably profitable genre in Hollywood), it’s curious to ponder why we might want to endure another two hours of stomach-churning gore especially when served on such a musty old platter. The decision to kill the series big bad Jigsaw in Saw III was fitting given the franchise obsession with cattle-prod shock value but it also left the makers in a trap they then struggled to get out of. Ensuing sequels were flashback-heavy, filling in an increasingly convoluted backstory, making each new Saw film feel more like daytime soap opera. In an attempt to swerve away from a timeline that even the most devoted Saw fan would struggle to explain, 2021’s Chris Rock-led Spiral tried to spin the story off into a detective thriller with a different villain but it was an embarrassingly junky disaster, a new low for a series that was already in the gutter.

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