Now this new development is giving sleepless nights to all Khans specially Shah Rukh Khan who counts heavily on his overseas market. Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan, both are formidable in their own right, genres and markets. While the two are best remembered together for their film almost a decade ago, Dil To Pagal Hai , they created magic once again in the more recent Heyy Babyy , when SRK made a guest appearance in the Akshay-starrer.

While personally they may be on friendly terms, professionally the two stars are giving each other a stiff competition at the box-office overseas. While SRK had become an instant rage in the overseas market with Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge , and has been numero uno ever since, However Akshay’s emerging as the new star on the overseas circuit giving tough competition to the Khan brigade (Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and Saif) who have been ruling the roost so far. And with his recent spate of successes, Akshay’s begun a steady climb to the top and is fast catching up with the undisputed badshah.

Akshay’s certainly hot property in the overseas market today. His films have done extremely well both in India and abroad and box-office collections clearly prove that in the overseas market he’s one force to reckon with apart from Shah Rukh.

Sample this: Akki’s Heyy Babyy has grossed approximately Rs 5.58 crores in UK, as opposed to SRK’s Chak De which has grossed Rs 3.47 crores so far. Not only this, Heyy Babyy has also taken the biggest opening in the US this year and the biggest screen average (6,039 pounds) in the UK. With this Akki is touted to takeover as the ‘Overseas King’ with consecutive hits overseas.

There’s no doubt that Akki’s raced way ahead of a host of other actors in the overseas segment. A film distributor reveals, SRK has so far been the untouched king in the overseas market. But though that is quite unlikely to change soon, Akki’s popularity abroad is soaring. Overseas distributors with ever-rising prices are lapping up his films. Even his films like Dosti that have not done well here, have seen several houseful weeks abroad. So, that way he’s a super hit hero and has been consistent in giving hits.

Akshay has done far too many films and has not maintained the exclusivity that’s been one of SRK’s strengths. SRK has been very choosy, doing only one or two per year, as opposed to Akshay. Because of that the success ratio of SRK increased manifold and shot him into the superstar league way earlier, but what needs to be considered here are the banners. While SRK made it big, under big banners, Akshay has made it big on his own and it’s only of late that he’s started doing films under the bigger banners.