Ramayana: Part 1 has its first song out, and the makers picked Ganesh Chaturthi to drop it. Jai Jai Ram, released on September 14, is built entirely around Ram and Sita's wedding, tracking the bond between Ranbir Kapoor's Ram and Sai Pallavi's Sita from courtship through to the moment devotees start worshipping them as a divine couple.

The track is composed by AR Rahman, with lyrics from poet Kumar Vishwas, and the vocals come from Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal. That's a fairly loaded songwriting credit for a single track, and it signals how much weight the makers are putting on the music to carry this film's emotional register rather than just its scale.

Visually, the song leans devotional rather than spectacle-driven. There's the wedding itself, then a stretch of Ram and Sita being venerated by crowds, all shot with the serene, almost hymn-like tone you'd expect from a song trying to set up the emotional spine of a mythological epic rather than sell an action beat. Given how much of Ramayana's marketing so far has been about scale, VFX and star wattage, Jai Jai Ram is a deliberate change of pace. It's the first real attempt to sell the romance at the centre of the story, not just the war that follows it.

Director Nitesh Tiwari, coming off Dangal and Chhichhore, is helming a project that's split into two films. Part 1 is set for a Diwali 2026 theatrical release, with Part 2 following on Diwali 2027, a full year later. That gap alone tells you the makers are treating this less like a franchise sequel and more like two distinct theatrical events built around the same festive window.

The production itself is a heavyweight combine. Namit Malhotra's Prime Focus Studios is producing in association with DNEG and Yash's Monster Mind Creations, pulling together visual effects muscle and a pan-India cast list that reads longer than most ensemble films manage. Alongside Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, the film features Rakul Preet Singh, Ravie Dubey, Adinath Kothare, Arun Govil, Indira Krishnan, Lara Dutta, Kunal Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Saurabh Sachdeva and Sheeba Chaddha.

Arun Govil's presence is a nice bit of continuity for anyone who grew up on the 1987 Ramayan serial, where he played Ram himself. Whether that casting was meant as a deliberate nod or just good fortune, nobody's said.

With the first song out and Diwali 2026 still over a year away, the promotional runway is long. Expect a poster or teaser drop roughly every few weeks between now and then, with the bigger question hanging over all of it being whether Part 1 can deliver the scale its budget and cast promise, or whether the story ends up buried under its own production weight. That answer is still more than a year out.