India, Nov. 4 -- Advance bookings for Ramayana are set to come to a close as the film enters the home stretch. Hours remain before the film's first screenings on Thursday morning, and pre-sales are at their peak. Advance bookings crossed the Rs.100 crore mark on Tuesday and are now racing towards the Rs.150-crore mark.

For the first 10 days after advance bookings for Ramayana opened on Dussehra, pre-sales did not gain momentum. That was largely due to a standoff between the exhibitors and the distributors over revenue sharing. Once that was resolved over the weekend, more screens opened, and advance bookings gained momentum. By Wednesday afternoon, the number of screens for the film had increased to over 6000. Over a thousand of these we...