Ramayana Part One cooled on Friday after a robust working-day opening, but the film trade is treating the decline as a calendar effect rather than a loss of audience interest. The Nitesh Tiwari-directed epic, led by Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, collected about ₹34.06 crore net by 9 pm on its second day, down 47.5% from the ₹64.85 crore net it earned on day one across all languages.
For a franchise-starter arriving during one of Hindi cinema’s most important box-office windows, the two-day trajectory matters less in isolation than as a setup for the long Diwali weekend.
Dhanteras and the pre-Diwali pause
The dip landed on Dhanteras, when evening puja timings and last-minute festival preparation typically keep family audiences away from theatres. Trade analyst Taran Adarsh told Mint the pattern is an annual one.
“Every year it is low. This year it would be the same (pattern),” Adarsh said.
He added that the Thursday opening was strong precisely because it arrived on a working day during the pre-Diwali window, and that Friday evening could be affected by puja mahurat timings. The expectation, he said, is for Saturday and Sunday to grow, with the larger jumps coming from Monday to Wednesday as Diwali begins.
Hindi still drives the total
On day two, the Hindi version again supplied the biggest share. The early language split was:
- Hindi: ₹25.42 crore
- Kannada: ₹3.62 crore
- Telugu: ₹3.02 crore
- Tamil: ₹1.11 crore
- Malayalam: ₹0.89 crore
That compares with a day-one Hindi contribution of ₹47.50 crore, followed by Kannada at ₹7.25 crore, Telugu at ₹6 crore, Tamil at ₹2.60 crore and Malayalam at ₹1.50 crore. The concentration in Hindi suggests the film’s core box-office test is how strongly north and central India hold through the festival week.
What the two-day total shows
Even with the Friday dip, the film’s India net total stood at ₹98.91 crore by 9 pm on day two, with India gross at ₹117.69 crore. Day one had delivered a worldwide gross of ₹127.50 crore, including ₹50 crore from overseas. According to Mint, the opening had already surpassed first-day collections of Dhurandhar and Animal.
The more useful comparison for a film of this scale is not Friday against Thursday, but the hold through Monday and Tuesday. A pre-Diwali slowdown is a known cost of the slot; the payoff is the surge that follows once pujas end and the holiday audience returns.
Day two, in other words, is not yet a verdict. The rebound the trade is forecasting will be visible in the numbers by Sunday evening.
Source: Mint
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