Hanuman Ansh has emerged as one of the biggest box office surprises of this year. Despite opening on a limited number of screens, the Vishal Chaturvedi directorial has had a successful run, becoming the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2026.
During an interview with Screen, co-producer Ragini Sona revealed how the team fought to keep Hanuman Ansh in theatres despite its screen count dropping massively following the release of Yash-starrer Toxic. “The first week was normal, which we thought would happen. In the first week, we started with 350 theatres. In the second week, just 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,” she shared.
Despite the strong competition, Hanuman Ansh firmly held its ground against Yash's Toxic. While the two films were discussed as box office competitors, for Ragini there was no fight between the films. “There is a dialogue in our film, ‘Hanuman Chaalisa padhte ho, phir bhi darte ho?' (You read Hanuman Chaalisa, and yet you fear?) So, we all were telling this dialogue to each other because somewhere or the other there was this slight fear. People who are connected with this film and had faith, we had totally surrendered to Baba,” she said, adding they never wanted Toxic to perform badly.
Ragini revealed, “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 would work steadily alongside Toxic, and this will be our journey together.”
Helmed by Vishal Chaturvedi, Hanuman Ansh serves as the first instalment of a trilogy. The film is based on the book Divine Detour: That Changed My Life and follows the life of Neem Karoli Baba. The film stars Shobhinaw Satyaa, Vihaan Shedge, Chandan Anand, Purnima Tiwari, Anil Rastogi and Gulshan Pandey in leading roles.
