Ramayana crosses $111,400 in US advance sales

Call it an early checkpoint, not a verdict. As soon as US ticket windows opened for Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana, the film began converting buzz into booked seats: $111,400 (roughly Rs 1.05 crore) from 5,200 tickets across 1,430 shows, according to early box-office reports cited by The Times of India. The sales window opened on October 15, nearly three weeks before the film’s November 5 worldwide release, and the first number gives us a small but tangible window into demand for the epic.

The early numbers at a glance

• Gross: $111,400 (approx Rs 1.05 crore)
• Tickets sold: 5,200
• Shows covered: 1,430
• Sales opened: October 15, 19 days before release
• Fandango offer: up to $7 off IMAX tickets

Why the early heat is hard to ignore

Star power is doing a lot of the lifting. The release of the second trailer and new character posters put Ranbir Kapoor’s Lord Ram and Yash’s Ravan back in front of audiences: one still shows Ram in a jungle action sequence, the other sees Ravan seated over the defeated Kubera army as he conquers Lanka. For Hindi film fans, the pairing is a big part of the appeal; for the trade, it is setting up the conversation about how large the opening could be.

Premium screens are the next battleground

Fandango has already attached a promotional hook for US moviegoers — up to $7 off an IMAX ticket for Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, using a promo code subject to terms and availability. The film’s international handle pitched the event as “the greatest epic of all mankind.” With a tentative runtime of 3 hours and 15 minutes, a premium-format push makes sense, but the film will not have those screens to itself: Godzilla Minus Zero is also competing for premium IMAX space. If you want a large-format seat, moving early may matter more than usual.

What this means for India’s opening day

The early response has given trade watchers a reason to revise their excitement upward, though 5,200 tickets is still a small sample. Some early predictions suggest Ramayana could become only Bollywood’s second film to open at Rs 100 crore net, after the Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar 2. There is also early buzz that it could surpass the reported Rs 400 crore lifetime business of the Prabhas-starrer Adipurush within its opening weekend. Those projections are aggressive, but the fact that they are being discussed this early is a signal in itself.

For now, what has actually happened is narrower than the speculation: US buyers have put down about Rs 1.05 crore across 1,430 shows. That is a start, not a result. The next useful checkpoint will be India’s advance bookings, where the real scale of Ramayana‘s opening will be tested.

Source: The Times of India