India, Oct. 31 -- The floodgates have opened for Ramayana advance booking with less than a week to go for its big release. The Nitesh Tiwari film had its world premiere in Los Angeles earlier this week, which led to a huge jump in pre-sales in the US. But back home, the film had been crippled by a deadlock between the distributors and exhibitors, due to which many shows hadn't opened up. On Saturday, the deadlock was finally broken, raising hopes for an increased pace of advance bookings in its final week.

Advance bookings for Ramayana opened on Dussehra, 15 full days before its global release. But for the next 10 days, only the Hindi version had extensive shows. And there, too, most of the single-screen and smaller centres had yet to op...