In a market where most A-listers are ‘unavailable’ due to one reason or the other, Shah Rukh Khan seems to enjoy a monopoly of sorts. We’re talking about stars making special appearances and performing at high-profile weddings. With Salman Khan advised not to dance given his trigeminal neuralgia condition and Aamir and Saif not supporting the idea, Shah Rukh is charging about USD 15,000 for an appearance and close to Rs 8 crore for a wedding performance. According to sources, the latter is roughly the amount he was paid for approximately a 30-minute performance at a high-profile wedding at Dubai’s Madinat Jumeirah hotel last Thursday. “It was on the invitation of Ahmed Hashem Khoory and Mariam Othman, the bride’s parents, that SRK agreed to perform,” confirmed Rashid Sayyed, who organises a majority of the actor’s Dubai events and is a friend of the bride’s family. “It’s not about Shah Rukh’s price. Even two years back, he was charging Rs 4 crore for a performance and Rs 1 crore for an appearance. And these days, anybody can shell out that kind of money – that’s roughly the cost of a super luxury sedan. The problem is getting him to perform. He is so busy that he only performs for people he personally knows. So unless you approach him through somebody he personally interacts with, he is not going to take up your assignment,” said a source close to the actor. Apparently, Shah Rukh received around 250 invites for wedding appearances/performances last year but took up only 10 of them. This year, he won’t be able to accommodate more than six such, the source said.
