Before Hanuman Ansh became one of 2026's biggest box office surprise stories, director Vishal Chaturvedi had already pitched it to a major OTT platform — and been turned down in terms he's since described as derogatory. Nearly a month into its theatrical run, the film he was told wasn't worth streaming has crossed somewhere between Rs 60 and 80 crore net in India, depending on which tracker's latest update you check.
What actually happened with the OTT rejection?
Speaking to India TV, Chaturvedi described pitching the story of Neem Karoli Baba — referred to in the film as Maharaj Ji — to a streaming platform, and becoming visibly emotional while narrating it in the room. What stuck with him wasn't just the rejection itself but the language used to deliver it, which he's called derogatory toward the story and its subject. Rather than shelving the project, he says the experience hardened his resolve to get it made independently and take it to theatres instead.
How did the film's numbers actually move?
This is the part of the story that makes the rejection sting in hindsight. Hanuman Ansh opened on August 7 to just Rs 10 lakh, and closed its first week at a modest Rs 1.08 crore total. Its second week added barely Rs 40 lakh more — the kind of trajectory that usually signals a film quietly finishing its run. Instead, its third week saw collections jump to Rs 10.40 crore, and momentum carried into a fourth week that pushed the film's net collection past Rs 60 crore by Day 27 according to Bollywood Hungama and Sacnilk, with at least one more recent report placing the figure closer to Rs 80 crore net as the film's run has continued. That kind of tracker variance is common for a film still actively climbing — the direction of the number matters more than the exact decimal at this point.
Why does this story land differently than a normal sleeper hit?
Plenty of small films have quiet openings that build slowly. What makes this one worth sitting with is the specific rejection at the center of it — a platform reportedly telling the filmmaker, in his own words, that a story about an Indian spiritual figure with "international relevance" wasn't worth backing, in language he found dismissive of the subject itself. We've written before about how Hanuman Ansh's climb proves budget isn't destiny. This detail adds a sharper edge to that argument: the film's own path to theatres exists specifically because one gatekeeper decided the story wasn't worth the platform's investment, and theatrical audiences have spent a month proving otherwise, one screening at a time.
