Ramayana: First Indian Film to Top UK Box Office on Opening Weekend

Ramayana is the first Indian film to top UK box office charts on an opening weekend, and it didn’t sneak over the line in a quiet week. Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, directed by Nitesh Tiwari and starring Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi, took first place in the UK and Ireland for 6–8 November, ahead of a Japanese monster and a crowded slate of Hollywood releases (The Hollywood Reporter India). Second place had been the ceiling for Indian cinema in this market for years. The ceiling just moved.

The numbers need one honest caveat before anything else, because the trade reports don’t fully agree with each other. Screen Daily’s figures, carried by BizAsiaLive and The Hollywood Reporter India, put the three-day take at £1.7 million from 364 cinemas, rising to £2.2 million with previews — a new record opening for an Indian film in the territory, passing Dhurandhar: The Revenge (BizAsiaLive; The Hollywood Reporter India). Variety’s chart reports £2.1 million for the weekend itself (Variety India). The gap looks like previews and reporting periods rather than a dispute about who won. Nobody disputes who won.

Ramayana, first Indian film to top UK box office, in context

To see why a £2 million weekend matters, look at the films that stopped one rung short. Variety notes the previous best chart position for an Indian film in the UK and Ireland was second place, held by RRR in 2022, Pathaan and Jawan in 2023, and Dhurandhar: The Revenge earlier this year (Variety India). Four major hits, four runners-up.

The release was built to break that pattern rather than hope around it. Sony Pictures distributed the film internationally, and Variety reports a rollout across more than 130 countries on some 10,000 screens, with 17 dubbed-language versions (Daily Inference). In Britain it played 364 cinemas — not a diaspora-only booking pattern, and trade coverage describes audiences reaching beyond the traditional South Asian cinema-going base (BizAsiaLive). No audience breakdown has been published, so how far beyond that base it reached is a claim the data can’t yet settle (Daily Inference).

Two Asian films owned the global chart

Zoom out and the weekend gets stranger — in a good way. The Ramayana global box office opening weekend figure was $52.15 million across 38 territories by Comscore’s estimates, second in the world only to Japan’s Godzilla Minus Zero, which took $63 million from 101 territories (The Hollywood Reporter India). An Indian epic and a Japanese monster film at one and two, worldwide, with The Cat in the Hat third at $30.5 million (The Hollywood Reporter India).

The two leaders traded places by territory. In the UK and Ireland, Ramayana finished ahead of Godzilla Minus Zero — placed second on Screen’s chart at £1.1 million, third on Variety’s, the one ranking detail the reports genuinely split on (The Hollywood Reporter India; Variety India). Godzilla Minus Zero has even been held back two weeks in India itself because of, as THR India puts it, “the Ramayana craze” (The Hollywood Reporter India).

At home, the film kept climbing after the weekend: a Monday surge pushed its five-day worldwide gross to a reported ₹663.9 crore, with roughly ₹250 crore of that from overseas markets (The Hollywood Reporter India). This is the first instalment of a two-part epic, reportedly mounted on a combined budget of around $500 million, and it ends with Sita’s abduction by Ravana — the battle is saved for the 2028 conclusion (The Hollywood Reporter India).

The story the film tells helps explain the travel. The Ramayana has been retold across South and Southeast Asia for centuries, in languages and traditions far beyond its Sanskrit source, so the film arrives in new markets carrying a familiarity no marketing budget can manufacture (Daily Inference). Hans Zimmer and A. R. Rahman composed the score together, a pairing that signals the intended audience plainly enough: this was scored for the world, not for export as an afterthought (Daily Inference). The second weekend will show whether it holds like a tentpole or fades like an event, and Sony and the filmmakers had not commented on the record as the charts were published (Daily Inference).

Analysis: one weekend doesn’t rewrite an industry, and the record margin over Dhurandhar: The Revenge is thin whichever set of figures you pick. But the Indian cinema UK box office record was never really about the margin. A Hindi-language epic, released like a global tentpole — dubs, premium screens, 10,000 screens worldwide — has now topped a market where Indian films were a permanent second place. Distributors programme for the ceiling they believe in. That belief just got more expensive to hold.

Photo: Prime Minister’s Office, via Wikimedia Commons (GODL-India)

Sources

1. https://www.hollywoodreporterindia.com/features/insight/ramayana-becomes-first-indian-film-to-top-uk-ireland-weekend-box-office-beats-godzilla-minus-zero
2. https://varietyindia.com/ramayana-makes-history-as-first-indian-film-to-top-u-k-ireland-box-office-as-godzilla-minus-zero-debuts-in-third/
3. https://www.bizasialive.com/ramayana-rise-of-a-legend-makes-history-with-no-1-uk-box-office-debut/
4. https://dailyinference.news/articles/2026-11-10-ramayana-just-broke-the-british-box-office-hollywood-should-be-nervous/