Is Salman Khan the biggest superstar?

When 3 Idiots swept box office records and Aamir Khan was hailed as the biggest superstar in the country, who would have thought a certain Salman Khan – back then, not going through the best phase of his career – would challenge Aamir for the No 1 spot?

Apart from the lifetime collections of 3 Idiots (200 crores), almost all other records held by Aamir have been broken. Not once, but twice. First by Dabangg and now by Bodyguard (collections are already around 70 crores in 4 days and Sunday should break the 80 crore first week record in less than 5 days!). In between, there was a non-festive release ‘Ready’ which collected 125 crores in India!

While Aamir has one release every year, Salman’s Bodyguard released just 3 months after Ready.

The other challenger for the top spot, Shahrukh Khan, has been missing from action lately. Ra One his next release will be his biggest test. To put Salman’s dominance over SRK into perspective, the first week of Dabangg (80 crores) was more than the entire lifetime collections of Shahrukh Khan’s My Name Is Khan (72 crores lifetime), which also released last year. And Bodyguard is expected to go past MNIK in 5 days flat!

Having said that, Shahrukh Khan has been the most consistent superstar in the last decade and his success ratio is unmatched. His last failure was Paheli and since then almost every film starring SRK in a lead role have been box office HIT’s or better.

If Ra One does anything in excess of 100 crores (and it has to because of high costs), SRK’s position in the industry and more importantly his 100% success ratio in the last 6 years, will remain intact.

Ajay Devgan deserves a mention too – Once Upon A Time in Mumbai, Golmaal 3, Rajneeti and the very recent Singham – have all been super-successfull. He’s right there at the top too.

For now though, it’s Salman Khan, enjoying one of the best phases of his career. He was always a crowd-puller, but never recognized as the topmost star. Now he is!

Who are the Top 5 stars in the industry today? Tell us in the comments section below