The devotional drama added another Rs 3 crore on its eighth Friday, and trade watchers say its next real test arrives with Drishyam: The Conclusion.
Eight Fridays in, and Hanuman Ansh is still finding an audience. The devotional drama, built around the life of Neem Karoli Baba, added Rs 3 crore on its eighth Friday, taking its India nett total to Rs 277.25 crore, according to figures reported by Pinkvilla.
That's not a number anyone expected in week one. Written, directed and co-produced by Dr. Vishal Chaturvedi, the film has been running on word of mouth and repeat viewing rather than star power, and Pinkvilla describes it as one of the biggest return-on-investment stories the Hindi box office has seen in recent memory.
The Rs 300 crore club is now within reach, and at the current pace it shouldn't take long to get there. Two months out from release, most films this size are winding down. Hanuman Ansh is still adding crores on a Friday, which is the kind of hold distributors don't see very often outside a handful of genuine sleeper hits.
But the real question isn't whether it clears Rs 300 crore. It's what happens after.
Pinkvilla points to Ajay Devgn's Drishyam: The Conclusion as the film's next big obstacle, expected to be the next major release to hit screens and, by extension, the next big thing at the box office. A film running on legs this long tends to get squeezed once a genuine tentpole opens wide and eats into its screen count. How Hanuman Ansh holds against that release will say a lot about whether its audience is loyal enough to keep showing up, or whether the run finally slows down once a fresher option lands in multiplexes.
For now, though, the trend line is still pointing up. Eight weeks is a long time for any film to keep adding numbers on a Friday, let alone one without the marketing muscle of a big studio release behind it. Whether that translates into a genuine all-time devotional-drama record, or simply a very good run that tapers off once Drishyam: The Conclusion opens, should become clear over the next couple of weeks.
Pinkvilla's numbers are trade estimates and not certified figures, and the studio hasn't put out its own tally for this stretch. Until an official number lands, the Rs 277.25 crore figure remains the one to watch, alongside how much of that lead survives once the multiplex math shifts toward Devgn's film.
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