- Ramayana film opens November 5 with Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram and Sai Pallavi as Sita
- The project involves a ₹4,000 crore investment across two films and a global release campaign
- Visual-effects firm DNEG and producer Namit Malhotra back the film with significant financial risk
Sunday mornings once belonged to Ramayan. Families gathered around the television, children learnt the characters' names, and the faces on Doordarshan became inseparable from the story itself.
Ranbir Kapoor now steps into that formidable inheritance.
Ramayana opens today, November 5, with Kapoor as Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana. Behind them is a reported ₹4,000 crore investment across two films, a global release campaign and a production in which even a necklace had to survive scrutiny against the curtain behind it.
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Nitesh Tiwari has taken on a peculiar challenge. Audiences know the story. Many already have firm ideas about how its characters should look, speak and behave. Expensive effects can build Ayodhya and Lanka. Winning over those memories will take considerably more.
Before heading to the theatre, here is a closer look at the film and the extraordinary effort behind it.
The Man Who Once Put His Home On The Line
Producer Namit Malhotra's earliest gamble was small enough to fit into a garage, though the consequences of failure were hardly small for his family.
He has recalled starting a computer-based editing business with about ₹7 lakh, funded partly by his father and partly through a bank loan. Later, the family mortgaged its home to help finance the growing operation. At one point, the business had a turnover of ₹75 lakh against a loan of ₹2 crore.
“We would have become homeless,” he recalled, according to reports.
Decades later, Malhotra heads visual-effects company DNEG and is backing Ramayana through Prime Focus Studios. The scale of his wager has changed dramatically.
The ₹4,000 crore figure associated with the project covers both instalments and their global promotion. Part One's individual budget has not been announced. Yash, whose Monster Mind Creations is a production partner, has spoken about the expense of taking the films to an international audience.
So the actor playing Ravana also has a producer's stake in how this turns out.
The cast stretches well beyond its three leads. Ravie Dubey plays Lakshman, Sunny Deol plays Hanuman and Rakul Preet Singh appears as Surpanakha. Arun Govil, Lara Dutta and Faisal Malik also feature. A.R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer have collaborated on the music.
Even The Jewellery Had To Act
For all the attention on visual effects, some of Ramayana's most absorbing production details concern objects the actors could actually wear.
Tribe Amrapali spent 18 months creating more than 4,000 jewellery pieces. These were designed for particular characters and moments: palace ornaments had to give way when the story moved into exile, while Ravana's imposing appearance required a different approach.
“You're not doing one film, you're doing 10,” Tarang Arora told The Hollywood Reporter India.
An ornament could be rejected because its motif repeated a design on a background curtain. Pieces also had to register on a giant screen while allowing the actor wearing them to move. Much of that golden appearance came from materials such as plated brass.
Arora told NDTV that Raja Ravi Varma's paintings, ancient architecture and archaeological references helped shape the designs. So did his memories of watching Ramayan as a child. He described the new film as the version his children's generation would grow up with.
That is quite a responsibility to place on a costume department.
A Long Afternoon At The Movies
The Indian theatrical version runs for 195 minutes, or three hours and 15 minutes. Add the interval, and this is a film to plan an outing around. Its U certificate allows unrestricted public exhibition, opening the doors to family audiences during the festive season.
Overseas viewers may encounter a different edit. Malhotra has said the team prepared separate Hindi and English masters, with the English version involving script changes as well as a separate cut.
The first reviews have brought encouragement. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw praised its spectacle and storytelling energy.
Ticket buyers have also shown considerable interest. At 8 pm on November 4, a reported Sacnilk snapshot put Indian advance bookings across all available dates at ₹111.89 crore, including blocked seats, and ₹90 crore without them.
Sony Pictures' overseas rollout has been billed as enormous, with reports outlining plans for more than 50,000 international screens alongside roughly 9,000 in India.
There is, however, a longer wait ahead for anyone hoping to watch the entire adaptation soon. Part Two has moved from its earlier 2027 slot to 2028. Malhotra says the team needs the additional time for the finale.
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