'Ramayana' Earns 127.5 Crore Rupees Worldwide on Opening Day

The mythological film ‘Ramayana: Part One’, starring Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor and Kannada star Yash, made a huge start at the box office, earning nearly 127.5 crore rupees worldwide on its first day of release.

Of this, the film collected 76 crore rupees from the domestic Indian market on day one. From the international market, its total gross stood at around 5.4 million US dollars, or 51.5 crore rupees. Within that international total, about 2 million dollars came from Wednesday preview shows in North America, and the remaining 3.5 million dollars from all regions of the world market on the official release day, Thursday.

The United States emerged as the biggest overseas territory for the film, where it did 2.8 million dollars of business on day one. That is the second-highest opening ever for a Bollywood film in the US market, just behind ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ at 2.91 million dollars. ‘Ramayana’ even topped the local box office chart on Thursday.

But the biggest surprise came from the United Kingdom market, where the film set a historic record for the highest opening day ever for a Bollywood film, earning 440,000 pounds. It overtook ‘Dhurandhar’, which had led with 427,000 pounds, with dubbed versions in other local languages also playing a big role in ticket sales.

Elsewhere in Europe, ‘Ramayana’ set a new record for the highest opening day for any Bollywood film in Germany, earning 165,000 euros. In Australia it recorded the fourth-largest opening with 505,000 Australian dollars, and it collected 775,000 Canadian dollars in Canada.

In the rest of the international tally, 125,000 dollars came from Nepal, 125,000 dollars from other European countries, 250,000 dollars from the rest of Asia and the Pacific region, and 50,000 dollars from other countries outside.

The picture was the opposite in the Middle East. With no shows in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and ticket sales in the United Arab Emirates below expectations, the film earned only 400,000 dollars in the region on Thursday, its first day, falling well short of expectations.

Despite lagging somewhat in the Middle East, there is a strong chance that the film’s overseas earnings will cross 20 million US dollars over the extended four-day opening weekend.

However, global distributor Sony Pictures spent heavily on promotion and advertising, so its expectations were even higher. That was hampered mainly by the film not engaging a bigger share of mainstream international audiences beyond the South Asian diaspora.

Still, the positive early response from general audiences and critics, along with strong advance ticket sales for the weekend, leads market analysts to believe the film is on course for even greater long-term commercial success.