Ramayana: Part One has crossed Rs500 crore at the worldwide box office in just four days, becoming the second-highest-grossing film in the world for the weekend ending 8 November, as the Diwali epic's extraordinary run continued to gather pace on its first Sunday in cinemas.
The film collected Rs56.15 crore net in India on Sunday, its fourth day, playing across 21,770 shows nationwide, according to trade tracker Sacnilk, cited by CNBC-TV18. That took its total India net collection to Rs238.85 crore and its India gross to Rs285.20 crore, while overseas earnings of Rs53 crore on Sunday lifted the international total to Rs222 crore — putting the worldwide gross at Rs507.20 crore.
The global scale of the opening was confirmed by Comscore's worldwide weekend estimates, reported by Bollywood Hungama, which placed Ramayana second on the global chart for the weekend with an estimated $52.15 million, taking its cumulative worldwide total in that report to $55.655 million. Only Godzilla Minus Zero stood ahead of it, topping the worldwide weekend with an estimated $63 million.
Comscore's breakdown underlined how much of the film's business is coming from outside India. About $43.50 million of the weekend total came from international markets outside the report's domestic territory, with the domestic weekend estimate at $8.65 million, and the film tracked across 38 territories — a footprint far wider than a typical Indian release.
The day-by-day path to the milestone has been remarkably steady. The film opened on 5 November with Rs64.85 crore net in India, the biggest pre-Diwali opening in Hindi cinema, added Rs48.05 crore on day two, then jumped to Rs69.80 crore on Saturday — its biggest single day so far — before Sunday's Rs56.15 crore, which was 19.6 per cent below Saturday but still a powerful hold for a fourth day. Early estimates for Monday showed Rs9.41 crore net in India by 9am IST, with the weekday trend still to settle.
The four-day total also settled a comparison that had been running since the opening weekend: in four days Ramayana has overtaken the lifetime worldwide gross of Adipurush, the previous big-budget retelling of the epic. At the end of day three its worldwide gross stood at Rs375.50 crore, with Rs182.70 crore net in India, so the fourth day alone added more than Rs130 crore worldwide.
Part of the haul has come from premium screens. NDTV Profit reported that the film earned $55.7 million worldwide in four days including a record $6 million from IMAX screenings, the biggest worldwide IMAX debut ever for an Indian film — a sign that audiences are choosing the largest, most expensive formats for a film sold on scale.
The film is Nitesh Tiwari's two-part adaptation of the Ramayana, starring Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana, and produced by Namit Malhotra. It was released on 5 November in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and the two parts together carry a reported budget of around $500 million — more than Rs4,000 crore — making it among the most expensive Indian films ever mounted.
Trade watchers say the overseas strength is the most striking part of the result. Indian films that travel well usually lean heavily on the domestic market, but Ramayana's international earnings are running almost level with its India gross, and its second-place global weekend finish put it ahead of several major international releases in the same frame, including The Cat in the Hat, the Stray Kids world tour film and Clayface.
What happens next will be decided by the weekday hold. The Diwali weekend gave the film a long holiday runway, and Monday's early figures suggest the drop is not steep, but the real test is whether it can keep drawing crowds through the working week and into its second weekend. If it holds, the first part is on course to challenge far bigger lifetime totals — and the second part, already in the works, will arrive with expectations higher still.
