Shah Rukh Khan finally greets fans at Mannat, a court shields Ramayana from piracy, and Andy Garcia heads the Kennedy Center Honors

Shah Rukh Khan did make it to the balcony after all. A day after 2 November’s midnight greeting was replaced by a handwritten note on a giant screen, the actor stepped out at Mannat on his 61st birthday to greet the thousands of fans gathered outside, waving, blowing kisses and striking his familiar arms-wide pose, the Hindustan Times reported. Red Chillies Entertainment shared a video of the moment with the caption “The KING of hearts, with his kingdom of love!”. The paper said he celebrated with family and friends at a Mumbai hotel, and that the birthday also kicked off promotions for King, with posters for the film lighting up the screens outside his home. King, directed by Siddharth Anand, is due in cinemas on 24 December and will be his first big-screen release since Dunki in 2023.

Ramayana: Part One now has court protection against piracy ahead of its 5 November release. On Monday 2 November, Justice Madhav Jamdar of the Bombay High Court granted a “dynamic” ad-interim injunction in a suit filed by Godpower Media, which holds the film’s copyright. It bars unidentified “John Doe” parties from recording, uploading or streaming the film, and requires internet providers and social media platforms to block or remove infringing links and mirror sites once Godpower notifies them in writing, without the company having to return to court each time, Bar & Bench and LawChakra reported. The court was told Part One cost ₹2,000 crore to make, and that both trailers had been secretly recorded at invite-only previews. Counsel for Google and other platforms recorded no objection. The order runs until the next hearing on 16 December.

The pre-sales keep rising, too. Sacnilk’s India tracker, updated at 7:20 am IST on 3 November, shows ₹72.26 crore gross in advance bookings across the opening days on sale (₹57.60 crore excluding seats blocked by cinemas), from about 18.5 lakh tickets, with opening day alone at ₹32.37 crore. Sacnilk also reported that worldwide advance bookings for the opening weekend have passed ₹100 crore gross. These are pre-release ticket sales, not box office collections.

In the US, the Kennedy Center announced the five recipients of its 49th Honors on 2 November: actor and director Andy Garcia, singer-songwriter Paul Anka, producer and composer David Foster, playwright David Mamet and country star Barbara Mandrell. Garcia was Oscar-nominated for The Godfather: Part III; Anka wrote My Way for Frank Sinatra; Foster has won 16 Grammys and helped launch the careers of Celine Dion, Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. The gala will be held on 7 December at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, the first time it has been staged away from the Kennedy Center building, which AP News linked to the ongoing legal fight over President Donald Trump’s renovation plans for the venue.

British actor John Leeson, the voice of K9, the robot dog in Doctor Who, has died at 83. His son Guy Ducker announced on Facebook that he died on Sunday 1 November “after a summer of illness” and that “the end was peaceful”, The Guardian reported. Leeson first voiced K9 in 1977 opposite Tom Baker, returned for School Reunion with David Tennant in 2006 and for The Sarah Jane Adventures, and was still recording the character for Big Finish audio dramas last year. His other credits included Dad’s Army and a stint inside the Bungle costume on children’s show Rainbow. Former showrunner Russell T Davies called him “a true gent, and a great loss”.

Ellen DeGeneres posted a tearful Instagram video on 2 November for Matthew Wright, a longtime executive producer of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, who died on 30 October in Los Angeles at the age of 52. No cause of death has been given; a GoFundMe set up for his family described it as “an unfathomable tragedy”. “He is and always will be the glue to our entire family at the Ellen Show,” DeGeneres said, Variety reported. Wright worked on the show from 2006 until it ended in 2022, and fellow executive producer Andy Lassner shared photos of the two of them taken hours before his death.

Melrose Place actor Andrew Shue and immigration attorney Marilee Fiebig married on Sunday 1 November in an intimate ceremony at their New Jersey home, People confirmed, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. The wedding came about a month after their former spouses, ex-GMA3 co-anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, married each other. Shue and Fiebig grew close after news of their exes’ relationship broke in 2022; Shue had told People in October that it felt like “freak luck”.

In Pakistan, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced on 2 November a plan to revive the PTV Drama and Film Academy as a modern training centre for filmmaking, drama production, editing and digital content, with private-sector partners, new studio labs and what he called the country’s first advanced colour-grading training programme, so professionals no longer need to go abroad to learn it, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. On screen, Samar Jafri, Aashir Wajahat and Abul Hassan shared behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram from a new, still-untitled ARY Digital serial directed by Meesam Naqvi and written by Kiran Siddique, the team behind Parwarish. Produced by Fahad Mustafa’s Big Bang Entertainment, it also stars Tehzeeb Shaheryar and Ameema Khan, ARY News reported. And Davar Mehfooz, known for playing Asghar in Aik Aur Pakeezah, has married influencer Tashfeen in what she said was an arranged marriage; a clip of the actor tearing up at the nikah has been widely shared, Minute Mirror reported.