Nobody saw this coming five weeks ago, least of all the trade. Hanuman Ansh, a small-budget biopic of Neem Karoli Baba that opened to near-empty halls, pulled in another Rs 11 crore net on its fifth Tuesday, per Sacnilk numbers cited by DNA. That's Day 33. The film's India net collections now stand at Rs 143.13 crore, with the gross total at Rs 169.20 crore. Trade watchers expect it to cross the Rs 150 crore net mark by Wednesday, and there's real talk now of Rs 200 crore before this run ends.

Put that number in context. This is a film that was written off in its first fortnight. Instead, it's turned into the most profitable Hindi release of the year, ahead of Dhurandhar: The Revenge, which still holds the title of 2026's highest grosser in absolute terms but never had this kind of budget-to-return math working for it. Profitability and box office supremacy aren't the same thing, and Hanuman Ansh has quietly claimed the former while chasing the latter.

The Mirzapur comparison is where it gets interesting. Mirzapur: The Movie, starring Pankaj Tripathi and Divyenndu, opened big and pulled Rs 15.85 crore on its own first Tuesday. Hanuman Ansh, five weeks into its run and on discounted weekday pricing, is earning Rs 11 crore on a Tuesday that should, by every rule of box office gravity, be quiet. It isn't matching Mirzapur rupee for rupee, but the gap is narrower than it has any business being for a film in its fifth week going up against a fresh ensemble release.

Director Vishal Chaturvedi's film, led by Shobhinaw Satyaa in the title role, has become the kind of word-of-mouth story trade analysts love to point to and struggle to explain. Small films don't usually behave like this past the third week, let alone the fifth.

What happens next is the real test. Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan's Haiwaan, directed by Priyadarshan, hits screens on September 11, and DNA's report suggests Hanuman Ansh is positioned to fight it for shows and screens rather than fade quietly into the background the way most fifth-week holdovers do. A Priyadarshan action drama with two major stars would ordinarily swallow a film like this whole on opening weekend. Whether Hanuman Ansh can hold even a fraction of its current show count once Haiwaan lands will say a lot about how deep this audience actually runs, and how much of it is devotional loyalty versus genuine crossover pull.

For now, the numbers keep climbing and nobody at any studio seems to have a clean explanation for why.