Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana Part 1 opens worldwide on 5 November, but the advance window has already delivered a nine-figure gross. By 10 pm on 4 November, the two-part epic had racked up ₹115.78 crore in India advance bookings across 96,165 domestic shows in 1,029 cities, according to data from Sancilk.com cited by Mint.
The headline number comes with a caveat media buyers should note. Excluding block seats, the advance total drops to ₹93.79 crore, from 25.81 lakh tickets. Block seats are inventory held back by exhibitors rather than sold to the public, so the lower figure is the cleaner read on real pre-release demand. Mint has not independently verified the Sancilk figures, so treat them as a working estimate rather than audited numbers.
Day one carries the advance
Opening day is the biggest single bucket in the pre-sale pile. Thursday accounts for ₹45.81 crore of gross advance collections, including block seats, from 12.60 lakh tickets across 25,886 shows. Strip out block seats and the day-one figure is ₹39.61 crore from 10.90 lakh tickets.
The extended weekend is stacking up behind it. Saturday has taken ₹22.06 crore so far, Friday ₹20.91 crore, and Sunday ₹14.93 crore. Monday, 9 November, has already added ₹12.08 crore, and the source notes all these numbers will climb as bookings continue. A single post-midnight window helped push the film past the symbolic ₹100-crore mark: after the 6 am cut-off, the first part added ₹19.35 crore more in advance gross.
Hindi leads the language mix
For media planners, the language split is the more useful number than the aggregate. Hindi shows account for ₹92.80 crore, or 80% of the advance gross. Telugu follows at ₹10.21 crore, Kannada at ₹9.28 crore, Tamil at ₹2.77 crore and Malayalam at ₹72.52 lakh.
City-level demand tells the same story with local flavour. Delhi NCR leads with ₹16.36 crore, ahead of Mumbai at ₹13.64 crore and Bengaluru at ₹12.07 crore. Hyderabad has sold 2.90 lakh tickets and ₹6.76 crore in advance — the highest ticket count among the listed markets, even though its gross is lower, a sign of different ticket pricing and mix.
What the number means
- Advance gross is a demand signal, not a final box office; spot bookings on release day will decide the real opening.
- The ex-block-seat figure of ₹93.79 crore is the comparable number to track against past releases.
- Hindi’s 80% share means national campaigns still lean heavily on Hindi-language inventory, but Telugu and Kannada are material second screens.
For a project built on a ₹4,000-crore budget across two parts, a strong first day is the entry ticket. The business case will be made or broken by the legs after the opening weekend.
Source: Mint
