Ranbir Kapoor’s Ramayana Nets ₹64.85 Crore on Day One, Trailing Adipurush by ₹21.90 Crore

The mythological sweep proved formidable, yet the crown stayed put. Nitesh Tiwari’s big-ticket cinematic retelling Ramayana hauled in ₹64.85 crore nett on its opening day in India across roughly 25,200 daily shows. It was a massive opening by any ordinary metric. But against its direct cinematic predecessor—Prabhas’s 2023 release Adipurush—the film stumbled, falling short by a stark ₹21.90 crore margin on Day 1. Gross domestic totals widened the chasm even further, with Ramayana booking ₹77.50 crore against the ₹103.08 crore opening gross logged by the earlier Om Raut project.

Geography decided the duel. When Adipurush marched into cinemas on June 16, 2023, the Telugu market carried it to stratospheric heights, supplying an eye-popping ₹48 crore alone alongside a ₹37.25 crore Hindi contribution. Ramayana flipped that regional dynamic entirely. Hindi circuits did the heavy lifting for Tiwari’s production, collecting ₹47.50 crore nett. The southern territories yielded far leaner returns: Karnataka brought in ₹7.25 crore, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana gathered ₹6 crore, while Tamil Nadu and Kerala posted modest tallies of ₹2.60 crore and ₹1.50 crore respectively.

Opening Day Head-to-Head: The Mythological Showdown

Yet inside the personal ledgers of its principal architects, the film triggered career-high champagne showers. For Ranbir Kapoor, donning the robes of Lord Ram pushed past the opening bar set by Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal, which previously anchored his top slot with ₹63.80 crore nett in 2023. Sai Pallavi—commanding the screen as Sita—demolished her personal best, easily blowing past Amaran’s ₹21.40 crore debut. Tiwari himself blew past the opening footprint of his 2016 juggernaut Dangal, which had posted ₹29.78 crore on its launch day.

But the national chart summit eluded them. While Ramayana eclipsed Drishyam 3: The Conclusion to grab the second-biggest Hindi launch of 2026, it failed to dethrone Dhurandhar: The Revenge from the year's undisputed pole position. Yash, embodying Ravana on screen, captured the third-highest opening of his theatrical career—settling directly behind the runaway receipts of KGF: Chapter 2 and Toxic.

The opening surge followed weeks of frantic distribution maneuvering. Advance ticket sales originally sputtered to life on Dussehra, running for 15 days after theater owners and distributors smoothed over contractual friction regarding revenue splits. That clearance loosened institutional purse strings quickly, driving advance bookings past ₹200 crore globally before roll-out, with the domestic pie claiming more than ₹120 crore of that pre-sale bank. With a clear runway across the pre-Diwali corridor, Tiwari's sprawling epic now faces the true test of high-budget cinema: holding its weekday grip once initial fan curiosity ebbs.