Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Part 1 opens in cinemas worldwide on 5 November 2026, just before the Diwali weekend, with Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana. Sunny Deol plays Hanuman and Arun Govil appears as King Dasharatha, while Lara Dutta plays Kaikeyi, Rakul Preet Singh plays Surpanakha and Anupam Kher voices Jatayu. The film is released in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, with a dubbed English version overseas, and is the first of two parts, with the second expected at Diwali 2028. It had its world premiere at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles last week and its Indian premiere in Mumbai on Tuesday.
The box office case is strong. According to Sacnilk figures quoted by The Indian Express, the film has collected Rs 96.75 crore in advance bookings for its opening weekend in India, from 25.73 lakh tickets across 83,172 shows. That is the second-highest advance ever, after Ranveer Singh's Dhurandhar 2, and it has overtaken Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan. PVR INOX alone has taken more than Rs 25 crore, and premium formats are more than 19 percent of the advance despite being only 2 percent of shows. Overseas advance sales are above Rs 40 crore, taking the global figure to about Rs 140 crore. In the United States, more than 51,000 opening-weekend tickets have been sold, ahead of Animal, Jawan, Pushpa 2 and Baahubali 2. Opening day alone accounts for Rs 39.40 crore of the Indian advance, from 10.14 lakh tickets across 23,699 shows. The day-one worldwide projection is around Rs 160 crore, higher than the Rs 120 crore opening of Pathaan and Jawan.
The case against is about scale and perception. Excluding block bookings, the Indian advance falls from Rs 96.75 crore to Rs 77.44 crore, so around Rs 19 crore of the headline depends on bulk purchases. The film still trails Dhurandhar 2, which opened at Rs 200 crore worldwide and sold slightly more US tickets at about 52,000. The reported budget for both parts is Rs 4,000 crore, with roughly Rs 2,000 crore for Part 1, a sum that demands a long and steady run well beyond the opening weekend. Hindi accounts for 82 percent of advance sales, so the other languages are carrying less weight than a pan-India release would need. International publications have given mixed reviews, while The Indian Express review praised the film as an epic made for this age.
For Indian cinema, the film is a test of whether mythology on a very large budget can bring family audiences back to theatres, and whether premium tickets priced from about Rs 250 to more than Rs 3,000 will be accepted. A strong run would encourage more ambitious epics and prove that a pre-Diwali release can work, while a weak second week would make the next such project much harder to finance.
The advance sales show real appetite for the story. The weekend numbers and the word of mouth will decide whether the film justifies its budget and its promise of a second part.
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