Hanuman Ansh box office collection day 52: Vishal Chaturvedi’s devotional film Hanuman Ansh, featuring Shobhinaw Satyaa as Neem Karoli Baba, continues its historic run at the box office, both domestically and worldwide. The film, made on a modest budget of less than Rs 2 crore, has now amassed over Rs 400 crore globally, thus fetching more than 200 times returns and 19,900% profit. The majority chunk of this figure comes from its India box office earnings, which now stand at Rs 362.70 crore gross and Rs 307.03 crore net, thus crossing the coveted Rs 300 crore mark on its home turf.

Hanuman Ansh scores biggest eighth weekend

Even over 50 days after its release last month, Hanuman Ansh continues to shatter records. Its latest milestone is scoring the biggest eighth weekend for an Indian film at the domestic box office. Across more than 12,000 screens, it collected Rs 18.85 crore over this past weekend. Almost half of that was made on its eighth Sunday (day 52), when it earned Rs 9 crore.

That was a 30% improvement on its eighth Saturday (day 51) earnings of Rs 6.50 crore, after a 90% spike from its eighth Friday (day 50) collection of Rs 3.35 crore. Thus, Hanuman Ansh has held its own in front of the new Hindi release even in its 8th weekend, giving a tough fight to Sidharth Malhotra’s action adventure fantasy film The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest, which collected over Rs 33 crore during its opening weekend, as per Sacnilk.

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Hanuman Ansh’s historic box office run

Hanuman Ansh’s box office trajectory is one for the books. It released on August 7 and had a very quiet start, earning only Rs 10 lakh from 250 screens. By the end of the opening week, its earnings barely surpassed the Rs 1 crore mark, leading to the screen count being reduced to just 40. However, the word of mouth picked up after the second week.

After the first three weeks scored a combined total of Rs 10 crore, distributor Cinepolis kept adding screens till the count reached 2,000 by the fourth Sunday, when the film had earned over Rs 40 crore in India. By adding another Rs 49 crore in its fifth weekend alone, Hanuman Ansh broke the weekend 5 earnings of even Aditya Dhar’s blockbuster spy thriller Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge, starring Ranveer Singh.

Hanuman Ansh entered the Rs 200 crore club within a month, post which it was also picked up by Hombale Films for international distribution. Since its overseas release on September 11, the film has collected over Rs 38 crore internationally. Since then, even domestically, the film has emerged as the highest grossing every week, from the fourth week to the seventh.

On its eighth Sunday, Hanuman Ansh surpassed the likes of Salman Khan-starrer 2016 sports drama Sultan (Rs 300.45 crore) and Ranveer Singh-starrer 2018 period action epic Padmaavat (Rs 302.15 crore) to emerge as the 19th Indian film to join the Rs 300 crore club at the domestic box office. It’s also only the third Indian film this year to do so, after Dhurandhar 2 (Rs 1132.99 crore) and Sunny Deol-starrer period war drama Border 2 (Rs 359 crore).

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Hanuman Ansh has, thus, emerged as one of the most profitable Indian films of all time. In recent memory, another small Indian film that scored as high an ROI was Ankit Sakhiya’s Gujarati devotional film Laalo, from last year. The film, which also showed signs of struggle initially, went on to become the highest grossing Gujarati film of all time. Made on an extremely budget of Rs 50 lakh, it eventually amassed Rs 120 crore at the worldwide box office, thus earning 240 times.

Given its current trajectory, Hanuman Ansh may very well be on its way to break that record. It has four more days to optimize its box office run before it faces fresh competition in Ajay Devgn-starrer crime thriller Drishyam 3. However, if the last couple of months are any evidence, the Neem Karoli Baba biopic is most likely to hold its own in front of yet another Bollywood tentpole.