Someone finally asked the question everyone's been throwing at Shah Rukh Khan for weeks. Have you seen Dhurandhar?

On Tuesday, during his latest AskSRK round on X, he answered without hedging. "Loved both the parts....fantastic by the whole team!!!" he wrote, replying to a fan who wanted to know if he'd sat through Ranveer Singh's two-part actioner.

It's a small tweet carrying a fair bit of weight. Dhurandhar hasn't just been a box office story this year, it's been a Ranveer Singh story. His turn as Hamza has spent months being dissected, memed and quoted online, arguably the most talked-about performance he's delivered in years. According to Filmfare, the combined worldwide gross of both instalments has now crossed Rs 3,000 crore, which would make Dhurandhar the first Indian film series to hit that number. That's a franchise-level claim, not a single-film one, so treat it as the sum of two theatrical runs rather than one blockbuster weekend.

An endorsement from Shah Rukh Khan, still the industry's most-watched Twitter account when he decides to post, doesn't move a number that big. But it does put an official-feeling stamp on a run that's already been unusually loud for two films built around one actor and one director's vision of Bombay's underworld.

The same AskSRK session gave fans something they'd been circling for a while, movement on King. Shah Rukh confirmed all promotional material for the film would roll out before December 24, ending months of chatter about whether the release itself might slip. When a fan pointed to the Christmas Eve traffic jam of releases and called King's slot a "sandwich," SRK didn't dodge it, he just claimed the tasty centre for himself.

He was in a chattier mood beyond the trade talk too. Asked what makes him feel most "king-like" off screen, his answer had nothing to do with crowns. Three cups of coffee in bed, he said, before anyone's allowed to speak to him, even if he's already running late for work. Then, he added, he gets to set and gets shouted at anyway, kingly feelings gone.

It's been three years since Jawan, and King now has a fixed date on the calendar for the first time in a while. Whether the promotional rollout that SRK just promised starts trickling out this month or waits till closer to the release, that's the next thing to watch. For Dhurandhar, the number that matters now is whether Rs 3,000 crore is a peak or a floor, since a third instalment hasn't been ruled in or out by anyone involved.