Ramayana: Rise of a Legend opens on $420m and a Diwali deadline

Ramayana: Rise of a Legend opened in India and the UK on 5 November 2026, three days before Diwali. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari, it is the first of two planned films and carries a reported budget of $420 million — over 4,000 crore rupees — making it the most expensive project in Indian cinema history. The BBC has reported the two-part project at $500m; sources differ on the final figure.

Ranbir Kapoor plays Rama, Sai Pallavi plays Sita and Yash plays Ravana, with Ravi Dubey as Lakshman, Lara Dutta as Kaikeyi and Sunny Deol as Hanuman. The film premiered in Los Angeles and was promoted in London at the Corinthia Hotel. It has been dubbed into nearly 40 languages, and Tiwari has said artificial intelligence was used to synchronise characters' lip movements with translated scripts.

The production carries unusual Hollywood weight for an Indian film. Producer Namit Malhotra is chief executive of Double Negative, the visual effects house behind Dune, Tenet, Inception and Interstellar. The score is by Oscar-winning composers Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman.

Reviews are mixed. The BBC reported divided critics. Social media reaction has focused on Yash's performance as Ravana.

The Ramayana has been adapted roughly 24 times for cinema and 13 times for television, beginning with the 1917 silent film Lanka Dahan. What is new here is scale and distribution: a mythological epic backed by Hollywood-grade effects and a near-global dubbing footprint, released into the Diwali window.

That timing is not neutral. The epic has shaped Hindu belief, festivals and stories across South and Southeast Asia, and it has driven Indian politics, particularly the Ayodhya temple dispute. The mosque was demolished in 1992, about 2,000 people died in riots, and the Supreme Court gave the site for a temple in 2019. The film is not about that dispute, but it arrives inside its resonance.

The commercial question is whether spectacle travels beyond the core audience. How much the film recoups theatrically before streaming, and where it lands after its run, has not been settled.