Toxic box office day 4: Yash film crosses Rs 190 crore but slows sharply on Saturday

Dubai: Yash's return to the big screen after four years began as a box office event and is now becoming a cautionary tale about the gap between star power and word of mouth. Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups opened huge, but four days in, the momentum has stalled.

The Geetu Mohandas gangster drama, which released on 26 August, has crossed one meaningful milestone while falling well short of another. It has now surpassed the entire lifetime haul of Yash's 2018 hit KGF: Chapter 1 in just four days, but it is running at roughly half the pace of its own predecessor, KGF: Chapter 2.

Note: box office figures are from industry tracker Sacnilk and reflect the latest available data.

After a staggering opening of ₹101.10 crore (approximately ₹1.01 billion), the film dropped sharply.

Day two brought ₹37.65 crore (₹376.5 million), day three ₹27.20 crore (₹272 million), and day four, its first Saturday, ₹24.50 crore (₹245 million) across 17,612 shows. Crucially, a Saturday is meant to grow on a Friday, and this one did not. Toxic posted a 9.9 per cent drop from Friday, which is the trade equivalent of a warning light.

That takes the total India net collection to ₹190.45 crore (₹1.9 billion), with the gross at ₹227.50 crore (₹2.28 billion). Overseas has added ₹27.25 crore (₹272.5 million), pushing the worldwide gross past ₹254.75 crore (₹2.55 billion).

The Hindi version continues to carry the film, contributing ₹15.50 crore (₹155 million) of day four's total, ahead of the original Kannada at ₹6.60 crore (₹66 million). Telugu managed ₹1.50 crore (₹15 million), with Tamil and Malayalam trailing at ₹75 lakh (₹7.5 million) and ₹15 lakh (₹1.5 million) respectively.

At the same four-day stage, KGF: Chapter 2 had collected ₹380.15 crore (₹3.8 billion) net in India, still held by Yash himself. Toxic sits at almost exactly half that. The film Yash needed to at least approach, he is instead lagging by a distance.

It has, however, cleared KGF: Chapter 1, which finished its entire run on ₹185.24 crore (₹1.85 billion) net. Toxic passed that in four days. If it holds even this reduced momentum, it could still overtake the lifetime hauls of War 2 and Salman Khan's Tiger 3 before the end of its first week, though it remains behind the year's biggest films including Dhurandhar.

Toxic opened to negative-to-mixed reviews and the word of mouth has not rescued it.

Critics have pointed to a bloated three-hour runtime, a chaotic screenplay, excessive violence and, most pointedly, the film's treatment of its women. A recurring criticism has been the gap between Mohandas's stated ambition of bringing a female gaze to the gangster genre and a final film in which several female characters remain largely defined by their relationship to Yash's character, Raya. The consensus, repeated across reviews, is that the film is more style than substance.

That reception has kept families and casual moviegoers away, which is precisely the audience a film needs to convert an opening into a long run.

Amid the criticism, Kannada star Rishab Shetty publicly backed Yash.

"As an artist, when you play a character, you try to bring it to life from the bottom of your heart. And here, I am truly impressed by the conviction with which the struggle of a powerful man has been portrayed," he wrote on X. "Maybe the plot and driving characters are not on the usual track on which most films travel, but that doesn't mean the track is wrong. The effort that goes into telling a story, and the journey it takes from being a thought in the mind to becoming a film on screen, is humongous."

Directed by Geetu Mohandas, Toxic features Yash in dual roles alongside Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth. Set against Goa's underworld during the decline of Portuguese rule, it follows Raya, a ruthless gangster who rises through violence, betrayal and ambition, while grappling with his fractured relationship with his estranged son, Ticket.

For UAE audiences, Toxic is screening across VOX Cinemas in Kannada, Hindi and Tamil with Arabic and English subtitles.