Ramayana: Rise Of A Legend enters its release window carrying a figure Hindi cinema rarely sees on a balance sheet: an estimated Rs 4,000 crore across two parts. Before the first part opens, the central question is not whether audiences will turn up, but whether the opening can justify a scale that already dwarfs the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2026.
The arithmetic of scale
Nitesh Tiwari’s two-part adaptation stars Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, and is slated for about 59,000 screens worldwide in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English. Pre-sales have crossed Rs 50 crore gross across India, with Maharashtra leading state-wise demand ahead of Delhi and Karnataka.
- Ramesh Bala pegs day-one India collections at Rs 100-150 crore, with north India and Karnataka driving the total.
- Exhibitor Akkshay Rathie says the film can cross Rs 100 crore on day one and eventually enter the highest-grossing Indian film conversation.
- Taran Adarsh calls it the “highest pre-Diwali opener of all time” and says the film has “grandeur and soul.”
- Girish Johar is more cautious, predicting Rs 50 crore in India and questioning a Thursday release that is not a holiday in India or overseas.
The record to beat
The immediate benchmark is Ranveer Singh’s Dhurandhar: The Revenge. That film grossed over Rs 1,800 crore worldwide and opened at Rs 102.55 crore India nett across languages on a combined two-film production budget of around Rs 250 crore. Ramayana’s estimated budget is about sixteen times that figure, so a record first day would still leave most of the recovery to later legs.
Bala notes that Dhurandhar ran house-full for four weeks, and says repeat value will determine whether Ramayana can compete. Rathie argues the epic can capture the imagination of the Indian audience in a way no film has before, with Tiwari as the architect of the mix.
The southern test
Mixed reviews from the Los Angeles premiere may not travel cleanly. Adarsh and Johar point out that the English cut is 35-40 minutes shorter than the Indian version and plays to a different cultural lens. Bala is more cautious, noting that negative social media amplification can slow ticket-buying at home, and that the premiere has not yet created a booking surge.
Karnataka is the early southern bright spot, with Rs 3 crore in advance bookings as of Monday. In Tamil Nadu, Suriya’s Scene and Nayanthara’s Mookuthi Amman 2 are competing for attention; Kerala has a race between Ramayana and Scene, and Telugu states have Venkatesh’s Aadardha Kutumbam. Bala’s reading is that south India is not responding like a Rajinikanth or Allu Arjun event, so the weekend will depend on word of mouth.
What matters now
A Rs 150 crore day one would beat Dhurandhar’s first-day figure, but it would still be a fraction of an epic-priced production. For our readers, the number to watch is not just the opening headline—it is whether the film can keep audiences returning through the festival window and beyond.
Source: News18
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