Thirty-two days in, and Hanuman Ansh still won't slow down. The Vishal Chaturvedi-directed biopic on Neem Karoli Baba, with Shobhinaw Satyaa in the lead, added Rs 10 crore net on Monday, according to figures cited from Sacnilk by the Free Press Journal. That takes the domestic net tally to Rs 132.13 crore, with the gross figure sitting at Rs 156.20 crore.

The fifth weekend alone brought in Rs 49.25 crore net, a number most films struggle to hit in their opening three days, let alone their fifth week. A Monday drop was expected. It came, but not by much, and the film still cleared double digits on a day that usually punishes even the biggest hits.

Here's the part that makes the whole run absurd. Reports peg the film's budget at around Rs 2 crore. Against that, a Rs 132 crore net collection isn't just a hit, it's the kind of return-on-investment story trade circles will be citing for years.

The slow-burn origin story

Hanuman Ansh opened on August 7 without much pre-release noise. Its first two weeks were rough, just Rs 1.48 crore in that stretch, the kind of number that usually signals a quiet exit from theatres within a fortnight. Instead, week three brought what can only be called a reversal nobody predicted, and the film has been climbing since.

Word of mouth appears to have done the heavy lifting here. Kangana Ranaut and Varun Dhawan have both watched the film and posted about it, and Dhurandhar director Aditya Dhar gave it a public shout-out as well, adding to the sense that this isn't just an audience phenomenon but one that's pulling in industry attention too.

What happens next matters more than the numbers already on the board. Hanuman Ansh is set to release overseas on September 11, opening up a new stream of collections just as the domestic run starts to plateau. The makers have also confirmed a sequel, though no timeline or casting details have been shared yet.

Given the trajectory so far, a Rs 200 crore net finish for the film doesn't look far-fetched. Whether the overseas numbers add meaningfully to that, and how quickly the sequel actually goes into production, are the two things worth watching from here.