Five weeks in, Hanuman Ansh refuses to slow down. The film pulled in Rs 10 crore on its Day 35 net, per Sacnilk numbers cited by the Free Press Journal, running across 7,664 shows on what was its fifth Thursday in theatres.

That's barely a dip. Day 34 had closed at Rs 10.25 crore, so the fall is just 2.4%, the kind of hold that films with much bigger openings rarely manage a month out.

And this is a film that didn't open big at all. Hanuman Ansh started slow, built word of mouth over weeks, and turned into what the trade is now calling a surprise blockbuster.

The context that makes the numbers pop is the budget. Reports peg the production cost at around Rs 2 crore, a figure so small that Day 35 alone would count as a healthy return for most films at that scale. Against that cost, this isn't a film chasing huge single-day numbers to break even. It's already well past that point.

Directed, written and produced by Dr Vishal Chaturvedi, the film is built on his book Divine Detour: That Changed My Life, and tells the story of Neem Karoli Baba. It's meant to be the first film in a planned trilogy. Shobhinaw Satya leads the cast, with Vihaan Shedge, Chandan K Anand, Purnima Tiwari, Anil Rastogi, Gulshan Pandey and Bhagvandas Patel filling out the ensemble.

The next chapter for the film isn't domestic anymore. Hombale Films has acquired international distribution rights and is set to put Hanuman Ansh out worldwide on September 11, a move that could hand the film a fresh wave of screens and a fresh audience just as its Indian run enters its second month.

Reception online has been split, if the chatter is anything to go by. Some viewers are calling it one of the better surprises of the year, others admit they didn't quite connect with it and aren't sure they're allowed to say so out loud. Neither side seems to be affecting the box office much.

What happens now depends on two things: whether the domestic run keeps its legs into a sixth week, and how the film performs once it opens to audiences outside India on Thursday. A trilogy has been promised. Whether that promise gets kept probably depends on what these next few weeks of numbers look like.