The wait for a first taste of Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana ended Monday morning. The makers put out Jai Jai Ram, a devotional track composed by AR Rahman with words by Dr. Kumar Vishwas, sung by Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal.

There's no plot heavy lifting here. The song leans entirely on repetition, Shri Ram's name recited and sung in different registers, and the video cuts between Ranbir Kapoor's Ram and Sai Pallavi's Sita against what looks like the film's grander set pieces.

Rahman explained the choice in a statement, saying the idea was to keep "the purity and intimacy of a prayer" while letting the arrangement build into something cinematic. Kumar Vishwas, for his part, said he deliberately avoided trying to describe Ram, calling that an impossible task, and instead wrote about what a devotee actually feels toward him. His words: "our guide, our strength and our refuge." No fancy metaphor, by design.

That restraint is a choice worth noting. Big-budget devotional openers usually go loud. This one is betting that Rahman's melody and two of Bollywood's most recognisable voices carry the moment without needing spectacle to do the convincing.

A Rs 4,000 crore bet

Ramayana isn't just another mythological retelling chasing festival footfall. Reports peg its budget above Rs 4,000 crore, which would make it one of the most expensive films India has ever produced, part one of a two-film release with the second instalment slated for 2027.

The cast list reads like an event unto itself. Ranbir Kapoor as Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita, Yash as Ravana, Sunny Deol as Hanuman and Ravie Dubey as Lakshman. Sridhar Raghavan and Tiwari share screenplay credit, with dialogues by Shreyas Jain and Tiwari, and cinematography split between Pankaj Kumar and Mahesh Limaye.

Behind the scenes, the production muscle comes from Namit Malhotra's Prime Focus Studios, working alongside DNEG and Yash's own Monster Mind Creations. Given DNEG's visual effects pedigree, expect the eventual trailer to lean hard into scale, something a single devotional song was never meant to preview.

Social media has already been circulating a fresh poster and chatter comparing the film's ambitions to Godzilla Minus One, which tells you where the conversation around Ramayana currently sits: somewhere between devotion and box office arithmetic.

What comes next matters more than the song itself. A full trailer, presumably built around the VFX-heavy set pieces this budget is meant to justify, hasn't landed yet. With Diwali 2026 as the release target, the makers don't have unlimited runway left to make that case.