Hanuman Ansh has had a surprising run at the box office. The Vishal Chaturvedi directorial opened on a limited number of screens and soon found itself competing with bigger releases, including Yash-starrer Toxic . Yet, the film managed to hold on in theatres even when its screen count dropped sharply. In a recent interview, producer Ragini Sona spoke about the uncertainty around the film’s theatrical journey, including the point when the team was almost ready to let it go, and why they ultimately decided to fight for another week.
It took us some time to convince everybody else, but they were eventually convinced, and we then went ahead with more theatres in the next week, and there was a small spend also in that. We discussed that all of the expenses will be covered if the film goes on for one more week. It went on for one more week, and the rest is history. With Yash-starrer Toxic hitting theatres, Hanuman Ansh faced even tougher competition. The cast includes Shobhinaw Satyaa, Vihaan Shedge, Chandan Anand, Purnima Tiwari, Anil Rastogi and Gulshan Pandey, among others. Vishal Chaturvedi has written and directed the film.
In the first week, we started with 350 theatres. Hanuman Ansh hit theatres on August 7 and has continued its run at the box office. By day 44, the film had earned ₹ 293.53 crore in India.
Because of two more big films ( Awarapan 2 and Toxic ) that had released, we came down to 25-30 theatres, which was too much of a downfall, but the business of Hanuman Ansh didn’t fall, which was the only ray of hope for us, but still, we were a bit divided, in the second week, just.
Speaking to Screen, she said, “The first week was normal, which we thought would happen. At the last moment, Vishal and I decided that we wanted to go ahead, and we told this to our distributors, and they also said that it was okay. The two films were soon being compared at the box office, but Ragini said the team never saw it as a direct clash or wanted to treat the releases as a competition.
Hanuman Ansh opened across 350 theatres, but its screen count took a major hit in the second week with the arrival of Awarapan 2 and Toxic. It was reduced to around 25-30 theatres, but the film’s business remained steady. Because if Toxic does well, it is the film industry that will collectively gain, we wanted all films to have a good run.
Ragini recalled how Vishal was travelling with the team to promote the film when they suddenly found themselves fighting to keep Hanuman Ansh in theatres. With the film losing many screens, the team had to make a last-minute call about whether to continue its run for another week. That gave the team enough confidence to take a chance and continue its theatrical run. Ragini stressed that the team never saw Toxic as a film they had to defeat. For them, both films could have a successful theatrical run, and the success of a big release would ultimately help the industry as a whole. This was our wish. This Toxic vs Hanuman Ansh was created by the people and the media. But we never thought that we would be able to survive even one day opposite Toxic . We thought that our film will work steadily alongside Toxic, and this will be our journey together.”
She said the first week was more or less what the team had expected. She added, “Having said that, we never wanted Toxic to do badly.
