Hanuman Ansh crosses Rs 3 billion, becomes third highest Hindi grosser of 2026 behind Dhurandhar 2 and Border 2

Three weeks ago, Hanuman Ansh was down to 29 shows a day and Rs 4 lakh in daily collections, a film that looked all but finished before the makers themselves decided it wasn't over. Today, it stands as the third-highest Hindi grosser of the year, having turned a budget of under Rs 2 crore into a total haul of Rs 3 billion. That's roughly 150 times what it cost to make.

A brutal opening, then it got worse

Hanuman Ansh, directed by Vishal Chaturvedi and based on the life of Neem Karoli Baba, released on August 7 — a full week ahead of the Sunny Deol-starrer Batwara and Awarapan 2. It didn't exactly announce itself as a blockbuster in waiting: opening day brought in just Rs 10 lakh across 355 shows, and its first week only dipped further from there.

Then things got genuinely dire. As theatres cleared space for Batwara and Awarapan 2, Hanuman Ansh's show count was slashed to a mere 29, and its daily collection fell to Rs 4 lakh. By any normal industry math, that's the point where a film quietly disappears from screens.

The comeback nobody scripted

Instead, its team went on the offensive. Lead actor Shobhinaw Satya and director Vishal Chaturvedi started physically showing up at theatres to drum up interest — and the strategy paid off in Surat, where the pair walked into a screening and got an audience reaction strong enough to convince the theatre owner to add more shows on the spot.

Word of mouth took it from there. By its third week, and helped along by Batwara's own box-office stumble, Hanuman Ansh's screen count exploded from 29 to 1,847 shows on Day 19 alone. The film then stunned trade watchers with Rs 12.75 crore on its fourth Sunday, spread across 5,363 shows — a number that has only kept climbing, with its most recent Sunday pulling in Rs 22.50 crore across 8,902 shows.

Outlasting everything Bollywood threw at it

What makes the run more remarkable is what it's had to survive. Akshay Kumar's Haiwaan came and went. So did Mirzapur The Movie, which opened big at Rs 25.75 crore on September 4 but had already dipped to Rs 3.75 crore across 6,991 shows by its second Wednesday. Geethu Mohandas's Toxic opened across a massive 24,579 shows and crossed Rs 100 crore, only to collapse under backlash and wind down its Hindi run entirely — reduced to 247 shows and just Rs 13 lakh by Day 22.

Hanuman Ansh took hits from all of these releases too, losing screens each time a new film muscled in. But it kept clawing them back.

Where it stands now

On Day 41, per Sacnilk, the film earned Rs 6 crore — a 27.3% drop from Day 40's Rs 8.25 crore, though Tuesday's cheaper ticket pricing likely padded that number somewhat. Over 40 days, its tally reached Rs 300.25 crore: Rs 280 crore domestically and Rs 20.25 crore from overseas.

That places Hanuman Ansh third on the list of this year's biggest Hindi grossers in India, trailing only Dhurandhar 2 (Rs 1,813 crore) and Border 2 (Rs 450 crore) — a staggering position for a film that, three weeks into its release, was down to fewer shows than most multiplexes run for a single title in a single afternoon.