Yash breaks down the math behind Ramayana's Rs 40 billion budget: 'If the film is nice, the audience would bless it'

The buzz around Nitesh Tiwari's two-part Ramayana has been inescapable, a pan-India cast, a global release strategy, and a budget figure so massive it's dominated headlines more than the film itself. Now Yash, who plays Ravana and co-produces the project, is setting the record straight on where that Rs 4000 crore number actually comes from.

Speaking on Aap Ki Adalat, Yash clarified that the widely-quoted figure isn't purely a filmmaking budget. "There's a misunderstanding I should clarify. Rs 4000 crore, quoted by my partner (Namit Malhotra), includes both the films, and the promotional costs for Hollywood. That's how the math there works. A budget equal to, or sometimes more than, the production budget is spent for promotions because it's global," he explained.

He also credited Malhotra, who heads Prime Focus, co-producing alongside Yash's Monster Mind Creations, for personally bankrolling much of the effort: "is working very hard and putting his own money." Yash framed it as a passion project bigger than any one person's ego: "He's doing it for the country, let him do it. If the film is nice, the audience would bless it."

This isn't the first time the numbers have come up. On the Game Changers podcast last year, Malhotra said he'd go as far as tripling the Rs 4000 crore figure if the film demanded it, describing the funding as almost inexplicable even to him: "Everyone, including actors, asked me if I have enough funds to pull it off. I've finished the first film and not borrowed a single rupee. I don't know where the money is coming from. When people ask me how I pulled it off, even I don't know. This is something else. It's just happening on its own. This is not just a project or a business proposition."

On Prakhar Gupta's podcast, Malhotra, whose net worth stands at Rs 9204 crore, recalled conceiving the project around the pandemic, when even the scale of ambition seemed absurd to those around him: "Budget-wise, everybody thought I'm a lunatic. Because no Indian film, by a long distance, comes close to it. So, to put it simply, it'll be about $500 million by the time we're done, on both films put together, part one and part two, which is over Rs 4,000 crore."

With Om Raut's 2023 Adipurush still fresh in public memory as a cautionary tale of a poorly-received epic adaptation, skepticism around yet another Ramayana retelling was inevitable. Yash pushed back on the idea that the story itself is the issue, arguing instead that each adaptation lives or dies by the imagination behind it. He pointed to his own childhood as an example, the mental images he formed listening to his grandfather's retellings were nothing like what his grandfather actually pictured. "We have to make the film entertaining, but also not hurt religious values. So, it's a very difficult balance, but we have to do it. It's a story that's survived so many generations. The best of people are there in the film," he said.

Yash singled out Sunny Deol's Hanuman as his favorite performance in the film, noting a shared regional connection: "He's also from Karnataka. Each actor is bringing their value to the film. They're doing good in their respective areas, but all of us have come together to tell this greatest story of our country."

The film's cast also includes Sai Pallavi as Sita, Arun Govil as Dasharatha, Lara Dutta as Kaikeyi, Indira Krishnan as Sumitra, Rakul Preet Singh as Shurpanakha, Vivek Oberoi as Vidyuthjiva, Kunal Kapoor as Indra, Sheeba Chadha as Manthara, Ravi Dubey as Lakshman, and Shobana as Kaikesi. With music by AR Rahman and Hans Zimmer, Ramayana Part 1 is set to hit theatres this Diwali.