Director Sanjay Gupta appears to have made fun of the producers of Ranbir Kapoor’s Ramayana, which is rumored to have a budget of Rs 4000 crore. Gupta recently claimed on his X handle that despite the enormous budgets of major Hollywood productions like Avatar and Dune, they never discussed it and instead allowed their art to speak for itself.
“MATRIX, LORD OF THE RINGS, AVATAR, DUNE, STARWARS, etc. All films feature groundbreaking, never-before-seen VFX. No one spoke about it before the release. They let the work speak for itself,” he wrote.
Despite not mentioning Ranbir Kapoor or the Ramayana in his article, Gupta’s timing left everyone wondering if he was criticizing the eagerly anticipated film based on the Hindu epic.
Does Ramayana Have a Rs. 4000 Crore Budget?
With a combined budget of over Rs 4,000 crore (almost $500 million), the Nitesh Tiwari-directed picture, which boasts an impressive all-star cast that includes Ranbir Kapoor, Yash, Amitabh Bachchan, Sai Pallavi, Sunny Deol, and others, has formally asserted its status as the most costly Indian film ever.
Namit Malhotra, the film’s producer, recently talked candidly about how he plans to finance the project when he told Prakhar Gupta on his podcast, “We’re funding it ourselves. We’re not taking anybody’s money”.
He acknowledged that many people believed the concept was insane when it first emerged six or seven years ago, right after the pandemic. “To put it simply, it’ll be about $500 million by the time we’re done on both films put together, part one and part two, which is over Rs 4,000 crore.”
Ramayana is being filmed for IMAX and will be released globally in two parts: Part 1 in Diwali 2026 and Part 2 in Diwali 2027. It is directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra’s Prime Focus Studios and the eight-time Oscar-winning VFX studio DNEG, in collaboration with Yash’s Monster Mind Creations.
