Cinemas cut Hanuman Ansh to 40 screens in its first week, and it has now made ₹400 crore

Hanuman Ansh, a film about the Hindu holy man Neem Karoli Baba that cost less than ₹2 crore to make, took ₹10 lakh on 250 screens when it opened on 7 August and was down to 40 screens by the end of that week. Word of mouth picked up from the second week, and the film has now made more than ₹400 crore worldwide, according to the Indian Express.

28 September 2026

A smiling man with a moustache, wrapped in a striped blanket in a misty forest, with a glowing golden monkey's tail curling up beside him
The artwork used on the film’s posters.
Image: Swambhu Media Network

Hanuman Ansh, which cinemas cut to 40 screens in its first week, took ₹18.85 crore on more than 12,000 screens this weekend, the biggest eighth weekend any Indian film has had at the domestic box office, the Indian Express reported on Monday.

The film, directed and produced by Vishal Chaturvedi, stars Shobhinaw Satyaa as Neem Karoli Baba, the Hindu holy man, and was made for less than ₹2 crore. It has now taken more than ₹400 crore worldwide, roughly two hundred times what it cost, with ₹362.70 crore of that gross coming from cinemas in India.

Forty screens

It opened on 7 August on 250 screens and made ₹10 lakh, according to the Indian Express. By the end of the first week it had only just passed ₹1 crore, and cinemas cut the number of screens showing it to 40.

Word of mouth picked up after the second week, the paper reported, and the first three weeks brought in ₹10 crore between them. The distributor, Cinepolis, kept adding screens, and by the fourth Sunday the film was showing on 2,000 of them and had made more than ₹40 crore in India.

Men in white dhotis raise their arms around a stone statue of Hanuman under a large tree hung with red flags
A scene from Hanuman Ansh.
Photo: Swambhu Media Network

The fifth weekend

In its fifth weekend alone Hanuman Ansh took ₹49 crore, more than Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, Aditya Dhar's spy thriller with Ranveer Singh, had made in its own fifth weekend, the Indian Express reported. It had passed ₹200 crore within a month of release, and at home it was the highest-grossing film in India every week from its fourth week to its seventh.

Hombale Films picked the film up for distribution outside India, where it opened on 11 September and has since made more than ₹38 crore, according to the paper.

A bearded man in a white shawl laughs as he sits against a mud-brick wall between two young boys
A scene from Hanuman Ansh.
Photo: Swambhu Media Network

This weekend

Over its eighth weekend the film took ₹3.35 crore on Friday, ₹6.50 crore on Saturday and ₹9 crore on Sunday, according to the Indian Express. The same weekend The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest, a new action film with Sidharth Malhotra, opened with more than ₹33 crore, the paper said, quoting figures from Sacnilk.

Men in turbans and dhotis carry a stone statue of Hanuman between them
A scene from Hanuman Ansh.
Photo: Swambhu Media Network

On Sunday it passed Sultan and Padmaavat to become the 19th Indian film ever to take ₹300 crore at the domestic box office, and only the third this year after Dhurandhar 2 and Border 2, according to the Indian Express. Chaturvedi has planned Hanuman Ansh as the first part of a trilogy, NDTV reported.

Carry a story in five words

We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. Today’s is below. Do play.

How to play

One real news sentence. The job is to keep the five words that carry the story and let the rest go, then guess. Blue means the right word in the right place, orange means it is one of the five but sitting somewhere else, and grey means it is not one of them. Five tries. The result beats the process, the name or the job beats the place, and little words like a, the and of never count.

Yesterday: Anna Kingrey could not reach the hospital in time; her husband called 911, and firefighters, arriving after the police, helped deliver the baby outdoors. The five: Firefighters helped deliver baby outdoors.

Play today’s on the full page ›
Written from the reporting of the Entertainment Desk of the Indian Express’s box office report of 28 September 2026, which quotes Sacnilk for The Vvaan’s figures, and NDTV’s report of 26 September for the trilogy. The poster artwork and the stills are from the film, produced by Swambhu Media Network.
Long Story ShortThis story in five words. Play today’s →