Ramayana North America Box Office: USA Weekend Pre-Sales Hit $3.2 Million, Second-Best Ever for a Bollywood Film

Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana: Part 1 has taken another big step towards a record North America opening. Trade reports published on Wednesday, November 4, put the film’s pre-sales for its opening weekend in the United States at $3.20 million (about Rs 28.5 crore), the second-best weekend pre-sales ever for a Bollywood film, trailing only Dhurandhar 2. The overseas pre-sales total across all dates on sale stands at $5.7 million (about Rs 50.8 crore), with the worldwide advance total at Rs 111.50 crore. All figures are trade estimates, not producer figures.

The ticket-count detail underneath the headline is just as striking. A live tracker count for November 4-5 in the United States shows $1,898,119 from 92,308 tickets across 6,117 shows, with premiere night itself — Wednesday, November 4 — accounting for $1,447,022 from 68,724 tickets. AMC is the biggest US chain for the film at $878,886 from 41,234 tickets, followed by Regal at $412,683, and California is the biggest US state at $307,560 from 14,728 tickets. In Canada, the November 4-5 count stands at C$325,662 from 20,178 tickets, with C$182,024 of that on premiere night, led by Cineplex. The United Kingdom adds £174,680. Note that different trackers count differently — one widely cited report cautions that scraped booking-site numbers can include blocked seats and face-value prices — so treat the exact totals as estimates that will firm up once actual collections are reported.

Ramayana stars Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana, with Ravie Dubey as Lakshman and Sunny Deol as Hanuman. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra’s Prime Focus Studios, with Sony Pictures distributing outside India, it releases worldwide on November 5, with paid previews in North America on November 4, in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, with IMAX as a primary platform.

Read our earlier North America pre-sales report here — and our worldwide advance-booking report here.

Here is the Filmverse take: the number that matters tonight is not $3.2 million but $1.45 million — the money already banked for premiere night in the US alone, before a single North American audience has left a theatre. That is a premiere audience buying on faith in the epic, the cast and the IMAX promise, and it puts the film within touching distance of Dhurandhar 2’s $2 million Bollywood premiere record in North America. The caution is the same as ever with advance figures: they measure intent, and intent is not a review. If premiere-night word of mouth matches the pre-sales, the record falls tonight and the $20 million-plus overseas weekend that trackers are projecting comes into view; if it does not, the film will still have opened bigger in North America than almost any Bollywood film in history.

Sources: Pinkvilla, BoxOfficeIndia24 — all box-office figures are trade estimates, not producer figures.