Kartik Aaryan will headline Ladaku, the next feature from director Kabir Khan, with a worldwide cinema release locked for 18 June 2027, Deadline reported on 4 November. Birla Studios, headed by Ananya Birla, is the lead producer, with Kabir Khan Entertainment also attached. Through Dopamine Studios, the label he opened earlier this year, Aaryan steps into a producer credit for the first time on a feature.
Key facts
- Lead: Kartik Aaryan; director: Kabir Khan (Kabir Khan Entertainment)
- Lead production: Birla Studios (Ananya Birla); Aaryan produces via Dopamine Studios
- Worldwide theatrical release: 18 June 2027
- Prior Aaryan–Khan title: Chandu Champion
- Producers frame it as a family entertainer alongside Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan and 83; no plot disclosed beyond that framing
Package and release
The producers have not published a synopsis. Deadline quotes them calling the film another “emotional, heartwarming, family-entertainer” in the vein of Khan titles such as Bajrangi Bhaijaan and 83, stories in which the lead fights long odds. Birla Studios described it as a tale of “ambition, grit and hope.” FilmBunch is not inventing further story detail. Bollywood Hungama separately carries the same 18 June 2027 date and the Aaryan–Khan reunion.
Aaryan and Khan last collaborated on Chandu Champion, which dramatised the life of India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, Murlikant Petkar. Deadline notes that Aaryan’s performance there took the Filmfare Award for Best Actor in 2024, and that his biggest commercial hits include Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 (2022) and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3. Khan’s earlier credits cited in the same report include Kabul Express as a reference point for his career.
The dated worldwide window puts Ladaku more than a year from theatres, which is typical for a large Hindi family title still in packaging. No writer, shoot start or budget has been disclosed in the Deadline report.
Birla Studios’ presence as lead producer is the clearest new industrial fact in the announcement: Ananya Birla’s label sits above Kabir Khan Entertainment and Dopamine on the production line as Deadline lists it. That three-way producer structure, plus a fixed worldwide date, is what clears the audience bar for a standalone deal piece rather than a roundup line.
India slate context
The announcement lands in the same India news week as EloElo’s $80m Series C, which FilmBunch covered this morning as a scale story for Hindi-language digital entertainment. Theatrical packaging of this kind sits beside other recent India-linked deal coverage such as the Phars Film overseas arrangement on Shah Rukh Khan’s King (already on site; not refreshed here). Further deal posts are collected under Deals.
Our reading
For buyers the package is a known director–star reunion, a named new studio brand (Birla) and the actor’s own Dopamine label on the producer line, with a hard worldwide date rather than a vague “2027”. The next evidence is a confirmed writer, a principal-photography window and whether the “real-life” language used in some Indian coverage is tied to a named subject before cameras turn.