Ramayana’s Diwali Rival is the Phone in Row G

Sunny Deol’s Hanuman has barely turned up and already someone has had to get the lawyers.

In the official Shree Hanuman Chalisa video, we see him from behind. His face stays in shadow. He takes a leap and says “Jai Shri Ram”. The point of a reveal like this is to show enough of Sunny Deol to make people want more Sunny Deol. It helps if you can decide how much they see.

His appearance in the post-credit scene also surfaced online. T-Series put out its video on November 5, the day the film opened. We don’t know whether the leak had anything to do with the timing. But the two versions make a fine introduction to the business of selling the movie. One is a carefully edited invitation to see what the filmmakers have done. The other can tell you what happened while someone in a cinema was supposed to be putting their phone away.

By Diwali morning, the makers’ warning to viewers was in the news. They said unauthorised footage was circulating on social media and messaging platforms, asked people to delete what they had posted and warned of legal action. Two days earlier, the Bombay High Court had put a clock on certain takedowns. Once the rights holder or its representative notified the internet providers and platforms named in the case, they had to act immediately and within three hours at the latest.

That’s quite a change of register for a film whose publicity campaign had been finding ingenious reasons for people to take out their phones.

The trailer that couldn’t wait

The first dispute over timing came before anyone could buy a ticket. In the November 2 Bombay High Court order, the film’s rights holder, Godpower Media, said it had previewed the first trailer at an invitation-only event at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi on July 18. Invitees were bound by confidentiality agreements. According to the company, someone recorded substantial portions and the material made its way onto Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube. The trailer was meant to travel to all those places eventually. The studio had simply arranged for it to arrive with rather better lighting and at a time of its choosing.

That’s a useful distinction in a campaign built around an epic that millions already know. The filmmakers can hardly keep the plot under wraps. They can keep a shot under wraps. They can decide when to show Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, which look for Yash’s Ravana gets the first close-up and how long Sunny Deol stays in shadow. The novelty resides in casting, scale and execution. A leak can get straight to the bit the campaign has been saving for later.

The court’s November 6 order records that infringing content had surfaced on multiple platforms after the film opened. It also required the named intermediaries to provide contact details for a designated officer who could respond quickly. The three hours run from receipt of a notice. They aren’t a promise that a clip will vanish from every screen three hours after it first appears. Anybody who has ever tried to retrieve a message after forwarding it to the wrong WhatsApp group will appreciate the distance between those two things.

The golden compass came with directions

Consider what IMAX wanted people to film. As Social Samosa reported, its packages for creators and critics abroad included a scroll, a collectible golden compass and passes. The compass was a handsome way of telling someone where to go. A conventional invitation might have got the recipient to the cinema. A box worth opening on camera could bring their followers along for the ride.

The format was doing some of the selling. The production made an issue of IMAX 3D, and producer Namit Malhotra has said he wants people to experience it on the biggest screen possible. A handheld clip can show who has turned up after the credits. It has a harder time conveying why that entrance should fill a wall. The cinema has something worth charging for there, provided enough people feel the difference.

Other partners gave the film ways to travel without showing its footage at all. Mangalmai became the official diya oil partner, put festive stickers on bottles and offered film merchandise and a special-edition Amar Chitra Katha comic through contests. I like the precision of that fit. A film arriving at Diwali could turn up beside a lamp people were going to light anyway. The brand didn’t have to persuade anyone to adopt a new ritual to see its logo.

UFO Moviez’s “Blessings” campaign went after a different customer: the advertiser who wanted to reach the film’s audience. It offered everything from screen time to lobby activations. A person walking into the multiplex with a ticket was worth something to the exhibitor, the producer and the brand hoping to get in front of them before the film started. A clip forwarded to a group chat could have a larger audience than a single screening. Good luck selling the lobby around it.

The second ticket is on JioHotstar

JioStar announced on October 21 that Ramayana: Part One would be available in India as a separate on-demand purchase after its exclusive theatrical run. It did not give a price or a streaming date in that announcement. Malhotra’s case for the deal is straightforward: plenty of people who know and care about the epic live beyond the reach of the cinema infrastructure he would like them to use. JioHotstar gives those households a legal way to watch at home. It also presents them with another decision at checkout.

That decision is familiar to Amazon Prime Video customers in India, who can already rent films separately. Disney tried a particularly apt version of it in 2020 when it offered another retelling of an old legend, Mulan, to Disney+ subscribers for an additional $29.99 in the US. That was a pandemic release, under very different conditions. JioHotstar gets to make its offer after the cinemas have had their turn, by which time many potential buyers will have heard a great deal about the film and some will already have paid to see it.

The platform has a credible reason to ask. One purchase could be convenient for a household watching together. It also has to contend with a habit the streaming services themselves cultivated: wait long enough and the film you missed at the cinema may turn up in a subscription you already pay for. A rival service can use a big premiere to make its regular subscription feel like better value. JioHotstar is asking whether this title can carry a price of its own. Much will depend on how high that price is and how long people have had to wait.

The biggest question for JioHotstar is what it learns from the households that do pay. A subscription tells a service that a household found enough reasons to stick around. A separate purchase tells it that one film got somebody to reach for a wallet. That could make the platform a more interesting buyer for another event film. The result would also be easy to misread. A family willing to pay for Ramayana at Diwali may have no intention of buying its next Friday-night movie one at a time.

There is an early sign that audiences will pay for this version at the cinema. Trade tracker Sacnilk estimates that the film took ₹182.7 crore net in India in its first three days. That measures the appetite for a theatrical outing on opening weekend. JioHotstar will be selling a different occasion: an evening at home, after the opening-week chatter has passed.

The epic already has a place in the living room

There’s an Indian precedent for getting a great many households to watch this story together. In March 2020, Doordarshan brought back Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan during the lockdown. Prasar Bharati’s annual report records 77 million viewers for the April 16 evening telecast. You didn’t have to buy that episode. You did have to turn up at nine.

The new film asks for a different kind of commitment. Its strongest proposition is that people will pay to see what this cast and crew have made of a story they could hear again in any number of ways. The folk memory that lets a diya oil bottle do some of the advertising also gives the audience plenty to compare the movie with. You can book an IMAX seat for the spectacle, wait to watch with the family, or decide that the version you grew up with will do very nicely. Familiarity supplies an opening. It doesn’t settle the bill.

I wouldn’t assume every clip costs the film a ticket. A few grainy seconds of Hanuman might persuade somebody to go. A watchable copy of the whole thing is a more credible substitute. There’s no verified tally here of cinema tickets lost or home purchases displaced. That leaves the studio with a choice it can actually make: put enough good material into circulation that people who want to share their excitement have something worth sending, and give people who want the whole experience a reason to pay for it.

The person in Row G has already bought one ticket. The next customer is in the group chat, deciding whether the clip is enough.