How Hanuman Ansh toppled Bollywood biggies

An approximately `2 crore film with no star is heading towards the `300 crore mark

Sandeep Goyal :

On August 7, 2026, a small devotional film released with no premiere, no star interview, no Instagram song. Titled Hanuman Ansh, its director Vishal Chaturvedi also wrote and produced it. The film is based on Vishal’s book Divine Detour: That Changed My Life. Its lead actor is Shobhinaw Satyaa. The film’s reported budget of ₹1.75-2 crore is less than the styling budget of most superstars’ movies.

Let’s see how Hanuman Ansh is faring in its 6th week: Friday - `10.25 crore, Saturday - `18.00 crore, Sunday - `21.00 crore, Monday - ₹8.00 crore, Tuesday - ₹7.75 crore, Wednesday - ₹5.25 crore, Thursday - ₹5.50 crore, 6th wk - ₹75.75 crore. This brings its overall total earnings to ₹228.95 crore.

So, how did this film strike gold at the box office? Let’s analyse.

 How a ‘dead’ 

 film revived 

When screens reduced, the makers walked

Chaturvedi and Satyaa took trains to small towns. They sat in theatres with 30 people and did aarti after each show. In Surat, one owner saw the audience crying and increased shows from 1 to 7. That story went viral in the exhibitor’s WhatsApp groups. Small-town owners, who are devotees themselves, brought it back. It was a yatra, not marketing.

It sold darshan, not entertainment

Ticket prices have been kept at ₹100-150 on weekdays. In UP and MP, videos showed people removing their shoes before entering the screen and doing aarti in front of it. They were not watching a film; they were visiting Kainchi Dham via cinema. When you sell entertainment, you compete with reels. When you sell darshan, you have no competition. Temple word-of-mouth is stronger than influencer word-of-mouth.

It had two audiences, not one

The first were uncles in Lucknow who visit Kainchi every year. The second was Gen-Z 20-year-olds who saw reels on ‘Why Zuckerberg went to an Indian saint?’ Hanuman Ansh connected to both sets of viewers. Hombale Films, which picked up worldwide rights later on, added ₹20 crore overseas from NRI bhakts who treat Kainchi as their Tirupati.

It was cheap, so it could be honest

`2 crore means no pressure to show a fake ₹20 crore opening. No P&A of 

₹30 crore. It could afford to wait for the audience. Honest films have long legs.

Is this a new trend? Yes. 

Is this the end of superstars? No.

We have seen this pattern three times in four years with Kantara (2022), 12th Fail (2023) and The Kashmir Files (2022). What is ending is not superstardom, but superstardom as a guarantee. Earlier: star + festival = ₹200 crore. Now, a star still gives you Day 1 – an A-lister will still get a ₹30 crore opening. But Day 4 onwards, if a film’s soul is missing, even superstar films are collapsing at ₹130-150 crore.

What Hanuman Ansh proves is Bharat is greater than Bollywood. Bollywood lives in Bandra preview theatres. Bharat lives in Kainchi, Salasar, Khatu Shyam, and in 9,203 single screens that can still play a film on Day 41.

(Sandeep Goyal closely tracks societal trends and interprets them for common understanding.)