Vishal Chaturvedi’s devotional film about Neem Karoli Baba has done something almost nobody expected: it’s crossed the Rs 100 crore mark at the box office. No big stars, a budget under Rs 2 crore, and it still got there, just took over a month instead of a single opening weekend, which is how most big Bollywood films do it these days.
According to Sacnilk, Hanuman Ansh, currently running across 2,724 shows, has collected Rs 4.71 crore net as of 1 pm on Sunday.
Veteran trade analyst Taran Adarsh’s tweet read, “100 NOT OUT TODAY – ‘HANUMAN ANSH’ IS SETTING NEW BENCHMARKS… #HanumanAnsh continues to surprise, amaze, and rewrite the rules EVERY SINGLE DAY.
In its fifth week, the film is now directly competing with #Dhurandhar [first part] – which holds the record for the HIGHEST WEEK 5 BUSINESS.
Week 5 – Saturday:
#Dhurandhar: ₹ 12.60 cr
#HanumanAnsh: ₹ 15.15 cr
#HanumanAnsh will step into the ₹100 cr club TODAY [Sunday; Day 31]… And mind you, the business has only just begun!
Where will its lifetime business eventually land?… Only time will tell… But one thing is certain – #HanumanAnsh has turned into a BOXOFFICE PHENOMENON.”
On its fifth Sunday, day 31 of its run, Hanuman Ansh pulled in another Rs 82 lakh, pushing its total to Rs 100.20 crore. The day before, on its fifth Saturday, it was sitting right at the edge with Rs 99.38 crore.
That Saturday jump came from Rs 16.50 crore earned across 6,055 screens, a 65% bump over Friday’s numbers. Friday itself, despite falling on the Janmashtami holiday, brought in Rs 10 crore from 5,055 screens. That’s actually a small dip from Thursday, when the film made Rs 11 crore.
Adding to the drama, Friday also marked the release of Mirzapur: The Movie, the big-screen spin-off of the hit Amazon Prime series directed by Gurmeet Singh. With a much wider release, over 11,000 shows, Mirzapur opened strong at Rs 25.75 crore on Friday and climbed to Rs 32 crore on Saturday.
But here’s the thing: Hanuman Ansh didn’t fold. Despite Mirzapur’s bigger opening, the smaller film still made more than half of what the new release earned on Saturday. And a day earlier, it actually posted the best fifth-Friday number of any Hindi film ever, beating out heavyweights like Dhurandhar (Rs 8.75 crore), Chhaava (Rs 6.50 crore), the Hindi version of Pushpa 2 (Rs 3.75 crore), and Dhurandhar 2 (Rs 3.25 crore).
Rewind to August 7, when Hanuman Ansh, starring Shobhinaw Satyaa as the late spiritual figure Neem Karoli Baba, opened in theatres with virtually no promotion. Just 25 screens, and Rs 10 lakh on day one. It limped through its first week with Rs 1.08 crore total, then fell further in week two, making only Rs 40 lakh.
Then everything changed. Week three saw the film suddenly take off, crossing Rs 1 crore in a single day for the first time, more than two weeks into its run. It kept climbing even as Independence Day brought competition from Batwara 1947 and Awarapan 2, closing the week at Rs 10.40 crore.
Week four is where things got genuinely wild. The film made 57 times more than it had in its opening week, raking in Rs 61 crore as word-of-mouth spread and theatres kept adding screens to keep up with demand.
Now firmly in the Rs 100 crore club, Hanuman Ansh shows no signs of slowing down. It’s expected to post another double-digit number today, its fifth Sunday, even with Mirzapur still in theatres. The film has about five more days to keep building before Haiwaan, the Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan crime thriller from Priyadarshan, arrives on September 11.
That same day also marks a new chapter for Hanuman Ansh itself. Hombale Films has picked up the international distribution rights and will roll the film out globally. And with director Vishal Chaturvedi hinting at a sequel, this might just be the beginning for a film nobody expected to be a phenomenon at all.
