Ravi Shankar Calls Hanuman Ansh a Slap to Big Spenders

Y. Ravi Shankar, a producer at Mythri Movie Makers, called Hanuman Ansh’s haul of Rs 426.51 crore on a reported Rs 2 crore budget “a slap on our face.” The Hindi film on Neem Karoli Baba opens in Telugu on October 9, with Hombale Films releasing it and Mythri taking the Nizam circuit.

He said that at a Hyderabad press meet on October 7, after a film his banner did not finance had already done the one thing Telugu big-budget cinema keeps promising and rarely prices honestly: travel on word of mouth, with almost no star and almost no spend.

Mythri’s Ravi Shankar Calls Hanuman Ansh a Slap

Ravi Shankar was in the room as a distributor, not as the man who wrote the cheque for the shoot. Mythri Movie Distributors LLP is putting the Telugu version out in Nizam. Hombale Films holds the South theatrical rights. The original makers are Swambhu Media Network and Holy Cow Home Productions, with Vishal Chaturvedi as writer-director.

It is like a slap in the face to see a film with a Rs 2 crore investment gross Rs 400 crore in collections. We are spending crores of rupees with not much to show for it. But to get Rs 400 crore for Rs 2 crore, that’s a real pan-Indian film. So, wherever possible, if you have skipped releasing it in any language, please release it in all languages. This film is a massive hit, not just revenue-wise. It’s a much-needed film.

Y. Ravi Shankar, producer, Mythri Movie Makers, Hyderabad press meet

The Rs 400 crore line was the round figure he used on October 7. Sacnilk’s day-by-day box office tally had the worldwide gross at Rs 426.51 crore the same evening, with India net at Rs 327.28 crore, India gross at Rs 386.56 crore, and overseas at Rs 39.95 crore. He also told the room that social media had made it easy to throw mud, that AI had left people unsure what was real, and that films with “fear of God” were good for a “polluted” youth. He was glad, he said, that this one carried a message and still made money.

An unnamed Telugu producer, speaking after the same run, drew a different moral. Spend less on films aimed at the whole country, the person said, and put the money into local stories that can recover inside Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. That is the twist inside the slap. Hanuman Ansh did not get rich by staying home. It got rich as a Hindi film that refused to die, then asked every other language to catch up.

A Film Cut to 40 Screens Then Grossed Rs 426 Crore

Hanuman Ansh opened on August 7, 2026, to Rs 10 lakh. Trade trackers list a reported production budget of Rs 2 crore. Week one collected Rs 1.08 crore net in India. The first 14 days managed Rs 1.48 crore. Screen count fell to as few as 25 to 40. By ordinary logic the run was over.

Week three added about Rs 10.5 crore as people started sending other people. The film crossed Rs 100 crore in India on September 6, the smallest-scale Hindi title to enter that club, then Rs 200 crore on September 12. On September 28 it crossed Rs 300 crore nett in India and Rs 400 crore worldwide. More than 200 times the reported cost, if you take Rs 2 crore as the base and Rs 426.51 crore as the October 7 worldwide gross.

THE TURNAROUND BY WEEK

Those six weeks are the part of the curve no opening-day model prices. Shobhinaw Satyaa, who plays Neem Karoli Baba, was the film’s second assistant director. The original lead fell ill. Satyaa auditioned for five hours and made his acting debut in the part. There was no star to sell the Friday.

THE SHOOT THAT ALMOST STOPPED

• The financier: The first backer walked away, and Chaturvedi, Ragini Sona and Namrata Singh had to cut the plan and put in their own money.
• The fee: Chaturvedi gave up his own pay to keep the film standing.
• The third cheque: Anupriya Nagar came in when post-production money ran short; the three women producers put in about Rs 60 lakh each toward the shoot.
• The apology tour: Nagar later said people who would not invest, because it was small and the director and actors were unknown, rang back to say sorry after it worked.

Chaturvedi built the script from his book Divine Detour: That Changed My Life. Satyaa told Hyderabad the film stopped being theirs and became “the nation’s cinema,” with audiences doing the publicity. That is the specimen the slap is about: a Hindi faith drama that had to invent its own crowd after the trade had moved on.

Pushpa’s Banner Just Banked a Cheaper Local Hit

Mythri is not a struggling independent. With Naveen Yerneni, Ravi Shankar produced Pushpa 2: The Rule on a budget of Rs 400 to 500 crore and took about Rs 1,800 crore worldwide. The same office also knows the other end of the scale. On August 21, two weeks after Hanuman Ansh crept into Hindi theatres, Mythri released Irumudi, Shiva Nirvana’s Ravi Teja film built around a father, a daughter, and Ayyappa Deeksha.

Naveen told the press Irumudi was made for Rs 50 crore, with the theatrical load around Rs 20 crore, because non-theatrical deals had already done a lot of the work. The film closed at about Rs 237 crore worldwide, including Rs 215 crore in India and Rs 22 crore overseas. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana put up Rs 194 crore. It sold 1.45 crore tickets in those two states, close to the 1.50 crore often cited for Pushpa 2 there, on ordinary ticket prices rather than festival hikes.

FOUR FILMS, FOUR PRICE TAGS

Ravi Shankar himself grouped Hanu-Man, Kantara, and Irumudi as faith films Telugu families had already taken in. The slap, then, is not news to his own slate. Irumudi is the local, mid-budget recovery path the unnamed source is selling. Hanuman Ansh is something else: a Hindi film that became pan-Indian after the industry had written it off, which is why calling it a cue to retreat into the two Telugu states misreads the run.

Hombale Is Selling a Miracle It Did Not Fund

Hombale Films is the Kannada house behind KGF and Kantara. Kantara’s original Rs 16 crore shoot already did, in 2022, the modest-budget, rooted, later-dubbed trick that Hyderabad is now applauding in a Hindi title. Hombale did not discover Hanuman Ansh in some unsold stack. It moved after the Hindi numbers were public.

On October 2 the banner posted the Telugu date.

‘హనుమాన్ అంశ్’ ఇప్పుడు తెలుగు ప్రేక్షకుల కోసం..!

We are delighted to bring the much loved #HanumanAnsh in TELUGU, for audiences to witness its divine brilliance on the big screen across the world. ❤️🙏#HanumanAnshTelugu Worldwide Release on OCTOBER 9th by @hombalefilms.… pic.twitter.com/kusXOCK3IV

— Hombale Films (@hombalefilms) October 2, 2026

Producer Ragini, at the Hyderabad meet, thanked Hombale for backing faith films such as Kantara and Mahavatar. Hombale Overseas, which had already been handling foreign territories, said the title had crossed $1.25 million in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Trade talk on October 6 put the Telugu-state advance near Rs 14 crore on a refundable basis, about Rs 5 crore in Telangana and Rs 9 crore in Andhra Pradesh. That is a distributor’s hedge on a finished hit, not the original Rs 2 crore gamble.

Shashidhar Reddy of Mythri said people who had followed the Hindi run online were waiting for Telugu, and that the banner was mounting a wide opening on October 9. Chaturvedi said Telugu viewers had asked for a local theatrical release, and that Hanuman statues and temples across the two states made the dub feel obvious. The South rights changed hands because the audience was already there, not because a Hyderabad studio had believed in the script in July.

Trivikram Walked and Kannada Viewers Want Their Turn

The Telugu plan was messy before it became a victory lap. Trivikram Srinivas was to present the version under Fortune Four Cinemas, with a September 18 opening. A Hyderabad teaser event set for September 15 was cancelled at the last minute. A person close to Trivikram said the deal with the Hanuman Ansh team fell through and that he was no longer attached. Hombale then took the South rights, covering Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, and locked October 9.

That Friday now sits against a Trivikram film in the same market, which is a sour punchline if the first Telugu deal really did collapse over presentation and poster credit. Kannada viewers, on the banner’s own announcement thread, asked why a Kannada production house was pushing Telugu first and what the delay in Kannada was supposed to achieve. For a company whose reputation was built on Kannada titles that later travelled, the sequence is awkward: Hindi has had 60-plus days, Telugu gets the festival window, and Kannada is still waiting in the replies.

The Local-Story Pitch Ignores How This Film Travelled

The Hyderabad meet tried to hold two lessons that do not fit in one hand. Ravi Shankar called Hanuman Ansh the real pan-Indian film and asked for every language still unreleased. The unnamed producer used Irumudi to argue that Telugu money should stay inside Telugu stories and Telugu states, with tighter budgets and a clearer path to getting the cash back. One of those lessons describes what actually happened after August 7. The other describes what a scared big banner would prefer to greenlight next.

WHAT THE RUN ACTUALLY DID

• The language: It earned the bulk of Rs 327.28 crore India net as a Hindi title, then went looking for Telugu, not the other way around.
• The spend: The people who stood the Rs 2 crore risk were a first-time director and three women producers, not a Hyderabad major.
• The delay: Telugu arrives on October 9 because an earlier local presenter walked and a Kannada major bought a finished hit.

Mythri can point at Irumudi and say it already knows how to make a cheaper film that fills AP and Telangana. That is true, and it is also beside the Hindi curve that produced the slap line. Hanuman Ansh did not recover because it was local. It recovered because enough strangers in enough towns kept buying tickets after the screen count had been crushed. Hombale and Mythri are now selling that habit in Telugu, on Dasara, with the hard part already on the books.

October 9 will show whether the two states still want a dubbed Neem Karoli Baba story after 62 days of Hindi noise, a cancelled Trivikram tie-up, and a Kannada house in the middle. The slap Ravi Shankar described was delivered by a film his office did not have to fund. The Telugu copy is the part they did buy.