Ramayana Part 1 Budget, Cast, And Hans Zimmer Score

By Ashish Shah Published Jul 31, 2026 · Updated 2 weeks ago

YOU NEED TO KNOW

Ramayana: Part 1’s trailer debuted globally on July 30, 2026, ahead of Diwali release.
The two-part saga’s combined budget is reported near $500 million.
Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman co-composed the film’s original score.
Ranbir Kapoor, Yash, and Sai Pallavi lead a cast filmed for IMAX.

A film based on a centuries-old epic isn’t usually the project that ends up trending alongside Marvel and Avatar sequels, but that’s exactly where Ramayana: Part 1 landed after its trailer dropped worldwide on July 30.

Three details are driving most of that comparison: the reported production scale, the star-studded cast, and an unusual composer pairing.

The Massive Scale

The number that’s hardest to ignore is the budget: a combined figure for both parts of the saga reported at close to $500 million.

That number isn’t settled across every outlet, some estimates working from the ₹4,000 crore production cost land closer to $418 million before marketing spend is factored in, but even the more conservative figure makes this the most expensive Indian film production on record.

Either way, it sits in the same territory as Avengers: Endgame and Avatar: The Way of Water.

The trailer’s visuals explain where that money went. Wide shots of Ayodhya, Lanka, and the epic’s three cosmic realms look built for large-format theaters, backed by producer Namit Malhotra, who’s also global CEO of DNEG, the visual effects studio behind Dune, Oppenheimer, and Interstellar.

Both films are shot for IMAX, and the release itself is part of the scale story: Part 1 opens during Diwali 2026, Part 2 during Diwali 2027, mirroring the point in the original epic where Rama returns from exile.

The Star-Studded Cast

Ranbir Kapoor plays Rama, Sai Pallavi plays Sita, and Yash, who built international recognition through the K.G.F. films, takes on Ravana.

Ravie Dubey plays Lakshman, Sunny Deol plays Hanuman, and supporting roles go to Arun Govil as King Dasharatha and Rakul Preet Singh as Shurpanakha. It’s a lineup pulled from across Indian cinema, chosen for a project clearly built with international reach in mind.

At the Delhi premiere event, Yash, who’s also a producer on the film alongside Malhotra, spoke about the experience of taking on the role, crediting Malhotra for the opportunity and noting he’d picked up some Hindi along the way for the part.

Moments like that have added to the sense that this cast sees the project as more than just another release, it’s being treated as a career milestone by the people in it.

The Zimmer-Rahman Score

Hans Zimmer, the composer behind Dune, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy, shares scoring credit with A.R. Rahman, whose catalog includes Slumdog Millionaire, Lagaan, and Roja.

It’s an unusual pairing, two composers from very different traditions working on the same score, and the result blends orchestral arrangements familiar to global audiences with instrumentation rooted in Indian classical music.

Rahman shared an early piece of the collaboration on his own social media, and the response was immediate, spreading well beyond the usual audience for either composer’s work individually.

For a lot of international viewers, that combination alone signals this was built with a worldwide audience in mind, not a domestic one.

Taken together, the budget, the cast, and the Zimmer-Rahman score are why Ramayana: Part 1 is being treated less like a regional release and more like a global theatrical event.

Whether the finished film lives up to that positioning is still an open question, but the trailer alone has already made it one of the most closely watched releases of the next two years.