The oldest story in South Asia is about to get one of its biggest screen tellings — and audiences are already leaning in.

Topping the list

IMDb's ranking of the most anticipated Indian films for the second half of 2026 puts Ramayana Part 1 at No. 1, drawn from the page-view data of the platform's hundreds of millions of monthly visitors, Variety reported. The 20-title list spans five languages — a snapshot of how wide Indian cinema's reach has grown — but it was the epic that drew more traffic than any other, a measure of organic anticipation rather than marketing noise.

An epic scaled to its source

The story is millennia old: the Hindu epic attributed to the sage Valmiki follows Prince Rama through exile, the abduction of his wife Sita by the demon king Ravana, and a war read across cultures as a struggle between righteousness and chaos. It has been retold from classical Sanskrit theater to shadow-puppet traditions across Southeast Asia. This version is directed by Nitesh Tiwari, known internationally for Dangal, and produced by Namit Malhotra's Prime Focus Studios with the VFX house DNEG. The combined budget for both parts has been reported at roughly $500 million — a figure that, if it holds, would rank it among the most expensive productions ever mounted in India.

The cast and the sound

Ranbir Kapoor plays Lord Rama, with the southern superstar Yash — who broke through globally with the KGF films — as the antagonist Ravana; Sai Pallavi portrays Sita and Sunny Deol plays Hanuman. The score pairs Hans Zimmer with A.R. Rahman, an East-meets-West collaboration that signals the film's ambition to travel well beyond the subcontinent. Both installments were shot for IMAX, India TV News reported, with Part 1 targeting a Diwali 2026 release and Part 2 a year later — dates that, as with the budget, could shift.

A bigger moment

Ramayana does not top a thin field. The list also features Alia Bhatt's Alpha, Shah Rukh Khan's King, and a second Yash entry, the crime drama Toxic, underscoring how much event-scale cinema India now produces. For hundreds of millions across the Hindu diaspora, staging this story with the production values of a global blockbuster is a long-held dream arriving on screen — and the early IMDb traffic suggests the audience is already there.