Ramayana rebounds with ₹69.80 crore on Saturday, Amitabh Bachchan wins permanent personality-rights protection, and Priyanka Chopra announces Ventilator 2

Ramayana: Part One, with Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi, had its strongest day so far on Saturday. Trade tracker Sacnilk, cited by The Times of India, put India Day 3 at ₹69.80 crore net across 23,696 shows, a 45.3% rise from Friday’s ₹48.05 crore and ahead of Thursday’s opening of ₹64.85 crore. That takes the three-day India net to ₹182.70 crore and India gross to ₹218.25 crore. Hindi led Saturday with ₹53 crore from 19,927 shows; Kannada added ₹6.30 crore, Telugu ₹6 crore, Tamil ₹2.50 crore and Malayalam ₹2 crore, with overall occupancy at 41.3%. Overseas Saturday was estimated at about ₹60 crore, taking overseas gross to about ₹157.25 crore and worldwide gross to about ₹375.50 crore. These are early trade estimates, not studio-audited totals; Sacnilk notes that overseas figures are rough and can change. The Times of India also noted that the film crossed ₹150 crore net in India on its third day and that, at the same three-day stage, it still trailed Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal on India net (₹201.53 crore) while leading Animal’s then worldwide gross of ₹356.05 crore.

At a pre-release event for OM, Dhanush defended his co-star Sai Pallavi’s casting as Sita in Ramayana. Hindustan Times reported that he said even a search across India would not have found anyone else who could have done the part justice. “There is so much noise around her portrayal of Sita. I don’t understand it. Even during shot breaks, she would be praying constantly. She is someone with such profound devotion to God, someone with such a pure heart. She looks so beautiful and she is a great performer,” he said. He recalled first working with her on Maari 2, when she was shy off camera, and being struck by her confidence nine years later on OM, where she plays CBI officer Nithya Reddy in a film that also stars Dhanush and Mammootty. OM is due in theatres on 20 November.

The Delhi High Court has granted permanent protection to Amitabh Bachchan’s personality rights, restraining entities from using his name, image, voice or other aspects of his persona without his consent, Hindustan Times reported on 7 November. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav decreed the suit Bachchan filed in 2022 after four entities settled, acknowledging his publicity rights and right to privacy. As part of those settlements, one party removed a mobile app titled Amitabh Bachchan Video Call, another stopped publishing a quiz book that used his image, a third stopped selling posters of him, and a fourth said it had deleted the domain amitabhbachchan.in in November 2022. The court’s November 2022 interim order is now merged into the decree, which also covers unidentified defendants after they failed to appear.

Priyanka Chopra announced Ventilator 2, a sequel to the 2016 Marathi film that was the first project from her production house, Purple Pebble Pictures. In an Instagram post marking the banner’s tenth year, she wrote: “10 years ago, with @purplepebblepictures, I decided I want to tell stories that mean something. Ventilator was one of those very important stories to us at the company. A decade later, we’re coming back to it, with so much more…” Hindustan Times reported that Rajesh Mapuskar, who directed the original, will return, and that Chopra, her mother Dr Madhu Chopra and Mapuskar will produce the sequel under Purple Pebble Pictures and Magij Pictures for a 2027 release. The cast, story and shooting schedule have not been announced. The first Ventilator won three National Film Awards, including Best Director for Mapuskar.

In Hollywood, Variety reported that Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult were among the actors who screen-tested to play James Bond for Denis Villeneuve. Pattinson stars as Batman for DC and appears in Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune: Part Three; Hoult plays Lex Luthor in DC’s Superman films and next appears in How to Rob a Bank, due on 13 November. Amazon MGM Studios hired Villeneuve last year, with Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight writing the script and Amy Pascal and David Heyman producing. Other British actors’ names have also circulated, but Amazon declined to comment and no official casting announcement has been made.

Michelle Yeoh told The Guardian she agreed to Blade Runner 2099 after receiving what she called “an amazing letter, a love letter” from the series’ creator, Silka Luisa — and that she was clear she did not want to play a human. She plays Olwen, a replicant she described as having “a very cold, steely look in her eyes” and a way of moving that is “not robotic… Like a dragon. Like a serpent.” Hunter Schafer co-stars as Cora, a human pretending to be a replicant Blade Runner; Yeoh said Olwen is also facing her own preprogrammed death. The series, set 50 years after the last Blade Runner film, begins on Prime Video on 25 November.