The trailer for Dhamaal 4 dropped on June 12, launching the fourth instalment of Indra Kumar’s comedy franchise with a premise built around competitive treasure hunting and the kind of slapstick escalation that has defined the series since 2007. Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Riteish Deshmukh, and Jaaved Jaaferi return as the ensemble’s core, joined by Sanjay Mishra, Ravi Kishan, Esha Gupta, Sanjeeda Shaikh, Anjali Anand, Upendra Limaye, and Vijay Patkar. The film is scheduled for theatrical release on July 10, 2026, India TV reported.
The trailer was unveiled at a themed event at Imagicaa, the amusement park outside Mumbai, an appropriate venue for a franchise that has always treated spectacle as its primary currency. The footage establishes a treasure hunt narrative where the returning characters compete against each other to claim a fortune, with predictable misunderstandings and obstacles punctuated by physical comedy that the series has never been shy about.
The Dhamaal franchise has had a peculiar commercial trajectory. The original 2007 film, made on a budget of Rs 10 crore, earned Rs 50.73 crore worldwide, establishing itself as a sleeper hit. Double Dhamaal in 2011 pushed that to Rs 70.54 crore on a Rs 29 crore budget. But the real breakthrough came with Total Dhamaal in 2019, which brought in Devgn as a lead alongside Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit and grossed Rs 228.27 crore worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing Hindi comedies of that year.
The seven-year gap between Total Dhamaal and the fourth instalment is the longest in the franchise’s history, and the market has shifted considerably in that period. Hindi comedy films have had an inconsistent run at the box office since the pandemic, with audiences showing a preference for either event-scale spectacles or streaming-first comedies. Where Dhamaal 4 positions itself in that landscape will depend on whether the franchise’s brand of broad, family-friendly humour still commands theatrical attendance in a market that has grown more selective about what warrants a trip to the cinema.
For Devgn, the film represents one of several 2026 releases as he continues to operate across genres and production roles simultaneously. He is credited as a producer on Dhamaal 4 alongside Bhushan Kumar and Krishan Kumar of T-Series, Ashok Thakeria, Kumar, Anand Pandit, and Kumar Mangat Pathak. The production is presented by Gulshan Kumar and T-Series in association with Devgn Films, a co-production structure that reflects the franchise’s commercial ambitions and the increasing importance of multi-stakeholder production deals in high-budget Hindi cinema.
Arshad Warsi and Riteish Deshmukh have been the franchise’s most consistent performers, appearing in all four films and carrying much of the comedic load. Warsi in particular has experienced a career resurgence in recent years, with his work in both streaming and theatrical releases earning critical reappraisal that his earlier comedy roles did not always receive. Jaaved Jaaferi, who has been part of the ensemble since the original, completes the core quartet that audiences associate with the Dhamaal brand.
The addition of Ravi Kishan, who has built a parallel career in Bhojpuri cinema and Hindi character roles, and the female cast led by Esha Gupta and Sanjeeda Shaikh, expands the ensemble without altering the franchise’s fundamental formula. Whether that formula can deliver a result in the range of Total Dhamaal’s Rs 228 crore haul, in a theatrical market that has become far less forgiving of mid-tier entertainers, is the question the July 10 release will answer. The film’s trailer suggests the makers are betting that the audience’s appetite for uncomplicated comedy has not disappeared, even if the streaming platforms have redefined what that comedy looks like.
