Yash's "Toxic" didn't just open big, it stormed past the Rs 100 crore mark in India on its very first day, according to trade estimates, making it one of the biggest single-day openings of the year for an Indian film. The gangster drama hit screens on August 26, and the numbers backed up the hype that had been building for months.
Opening numbers
The signs were there well before release day. Advance bookings crossed Rs 18 crore within 48 hours of window opening, and by the time ticket counters actually opened that figure had climbed further, with reports putting block-seat-inclusive advance numbers around Rs 27 crore. That kind of pre-sale momentum for a film headlined by a Kannada star speaks to how far Yash's pull has traveled since "KGF Chapter 2," and it set up exactly the kind of day-one surge trade watchers were expecting.
"Toxic" released on a genuinely massive scale, with reports pegging the worldwide screen count at around 12,000, a distribution footprint more typical of a pan-India tentpole than a regional genre film. That scale mattered once the day-one numbers came in: multiple trade outlets reported the film crossing the Rs 100 crore mark in India within its first day, putting it ahead of comparisons drawn to recent big openers. Final, audited numbers tend to firm up over the following days, so treat early trade estimates as directional rather than gospel, but the trend is unambiguous: this was a monster opening by any recent Indian benchmark.
Critical reception
Reviews landed split, which is roughly what you'd expect from a film this stylistically aggressive. India TV News called it a magnetic showcase for Yash in an ambitious gangster drama that, unusually for the genre, gives its women real weight rather than treating them as scenery. The Week was more measured, praising director Geetu Mohandas for a "daring, yet patchy" deconstruction of gangster-movie tropes, essentially a film taking real swings that doesn't land all of them. On the harsher end, DNA India dismissed it as heavy on action and style but thin on emotional follow-through, calling it an "epic waste" of a stacked cast. Read together, the consensus is a film that's visually and tonally bold, built for spectacle first, with critics divided on whether the story underneath earns that ambition.
Cast and story
Yash anchors the film in full leading-man mode, but "Toxic" leans hard into being an ensemble piece around him. Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Rukmini Vasanth, Huma Qureshi and Tara Sutaria all feature in a cast that's unusually loaded for a gangster drama, a genre that typically sidelines its female characters. Several reviewers specifically flagged that this film doesn't do that, giving its women arcs that matter to the plot rather than existing purely in orbit of the lead.
Behind the camera, Geetu Mohandas, known for character-driven, formally inventive work like "Moothon," brings an arthouse sensibility to a mainstream gangster canvas, which explains why critics keep reaching for words like "daring" and "ambitious" even when they're not fully sold on the execution. The project has been years in the making and was previously the subject of headlines over location and permit issues during production, adding to the sense that this was a hard-fought, high-stakes release for everyone involved.
What's next for the film
With a day-one number this strong, the real story now shifts to legs: whether "Toxic" can sustain weekday footfall once the opening-weekend curiosity wears off, and how it performs overseas given the earlier reports of a delayed UAE rollout. Trade watchers will also be tracking how it holds up against "Dhurandhar 2," which is circling a nearby release window and was central to some of the comparisons floating around this opening. Expect updated collection figures through the week as more markets report in and early estimates get reconciled into confirmed numbers.
Curious how box office numbers are actually reported? See our box office explainer.
