Project Hail Mary IMAX India Release: Only 6 Screens Secured Against Dhurandhar 2 As Fans Demand More Shows

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Today is Thursday, March 26, 2026, and if you are in Mumbai or Delhi trying to book an IMAX ticket for the most anticipated sci-fi movie of the decade, you are probably staring at a Sold Out sign or, worse, a screen that doesn’t exist.

Project Hail Mary has officially landed in India. But it has landed with a thud. While the rest of the world is witnessing Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace save humanity on massive 70-foot screens, Indian fans are being told to settle for the small stuff.

Out of 34 glorious IMAX screens in the country, this Filmed for IMAX masterpiece has clawed its way into only 6. It is a David vs. Goliath situation, but this time, Goliath has a gun and a ₹500 crore box office collection.

The culprit? A home-grown monster called Dhurandhar: The Revenge.

Ranveer Singh’s spy thriller is not just a hit; it is a cultural phenomenon that has swallowed the Indian box office whole.

Since its release last week, it has refused to vacate the premium large-format screens. This has triggered a massive standoff between Sony Pictures India and local exhibitors.

Fans are taking to X to vent their frustration, screaming about the irony of a movie specifically designed for the IMAX format being relegated to regular 2D screens. It is a mess. It is loud. And it is exactly the kind of industry drama that shows where the power really lies in 2026.

The Screen Crunch: A Battle of Math vs. Masterpieces

The situation escalated late Wednesday night when tickets for Project Hail Mary briefly appeared for IMAX properties in Kochi and Coimbatore, only to vanish into thin air hours later.

Imagine being a fan, refreshing your app, seeing the show, and then watching it get deleted like a bad memory. It wasn’t a glitch. It was the result of high-stakes negotiations where theatre owners looked at the occupancy of Dhurandhar 2 and decided that Hollywood could wait. The math is simple but brutal.

Dhurandhar 2 is pulling in 90% occupancy even on weekdays. Theatre owners are businesses, not art galleries. They want the cash.

This isn’t just about one movie.

This is a massive shift in how Hollywood operates in India. For years, we were told that the Indian audience was hungry for “Global Cinema.” We were told that technical brilliance would always find a home on the biggest screens. But as of this morning, if you are in Delhi-NCR, there isn’t a single IMAX show for the Gosling epic. Not one. The six screens that were eventually secured are scattered like breadcrumbs across Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata.

If you live anywhere else, you are effectively watching a space odyssey on a screen meant for a sitcom. It feels like a betrayal of the format.

Why the “Filmed for IMAX” Tag Didn’t Save Ryan Gosling

According to Bollywood Hungama, the negotiations were “intense and exhausting,” with distributors trying to convince chains like PVR-INOX to give at least a 50-50 split. But with Dhurandhar 2 raking in ₹48 crore on a single Wednesday, the leverage was non-existent.

The reality of the Indian market in 2026 is that a local blockbuster with a 229-minute runtime is more valuable than a critically acclaimed Hollywood sci-fi. It is a bitter pill for cinephiles to swallow. We often hear directors talk about the “sanctity of the theatre experience,” but that sanctity seems to have a price tag that Project Hail Mary just couldn’t meet this week.

Are we actually evolving as a cinema-going audience if we block out technical masterpieces for safe, mass-market sequels?

Or is this just the ultimate proof that “Content is King” only when the King speaks the local language?

It is a fair question to ask. While we celebrate the “soft power” of Indian cinema, as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller recently noted in a Hindustan Times interview, the collateral damage is the diversity of our cinematic diet. We are being fed a steady stream of what’s popular, while the “extraordinary” is pushed to the margins.

A Timeline of a Predicted Disaster

The writing was on the wall weeks ago. Project Hail Mary was originally supposed to release on March 20. But the “Dhurandhar Storm” was already brewing. Sony Pictures shifted the date to March 26, hoping the hype would die down. They were wrong.

Dhurandhar 2 didn’t just stay steady; it grew. By the time today arrived, the IMAX VP for the region, Preetham Daniel, was tweeting about how the movie should be watched on the biggest screen possible. Yet, the very screens he was promoting were already locked behind a wall of Ranveer Singh’s spy heroics.

• The movie was delayed by a week to avoid a direct clash.
• Dhurandhar 2 shattered records, making it impossible for theatres to drop shows.
• Social media campaigns like #GivePHMIMAX started trending but failed to move the needle for exhibitors.
• By Thursday morning, only 5-6 screens were confirmed, leaving major hubs like Delhi and Bengaluru completely out of the IMAX loop.

This isn’t just a minor scheduling conflict. It is a sign of a deeper crisis in theatre infrastructure.

We have 34 IMAX screens for a population of 1.4 billion. When two giants collide, there is simply no room for both to breathe. One has to die so the other can thrive. This week, Ryland Grace is the one gasping for air in the vacuum of the Indian distribution system.

The View from the Reporter’s Desk

Authors Take by Gulshan Mishra, Viral News Analyst at BoxOfficeWala: This is a dark day for the premium movie-going experience in India.

While I love a good Indian blockbuster as much as the next guy, there is something fundamentally wrong when a movie specifically filmed for a format is denied that format. It’s like buying a Ferrari and being told you can only drive it in a narrow alleyway.

This isn’t good news for Hollywood’s future in India. If major studios see that their “Format Films” are being squeezed out, they might stop prioritising our market for these high-end releases. Looking forward, the only hope is a “secondary release” or a shift in shows by next Monday once the Dhurandhar fever slightly cools. But for the opening weekend? The damage is done.

Would you watch a “Filmed for IMAX” movie on a regular 2D screen, or would you rather wait for it to hit streaming? Let me know in the comments!