Yash's Toxic storms past Rs 18 crore in 48 hours, outpacing Dhurandhar, Animal, and Jawan
Only Dhurandhar 2 sits ahead, and that was a sequel. Toxic is a standalone Kannada film
Dubai: Yash has not appeared on a cinema screen since KGF: Chapter 2 in 2022. Four years later, the ticket counters have answered all at once.
Advance bookings for Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups opened in India at 1.20am IST on Friday, 21 August. Within 48 hours the Geetu Mohandas-directed gangster saga had stormed past Rs 18 crore, and the numbers it left behind on the way are more than these movies had made: Animal, Dhurandhar, Tiger 3 and, at the same stage of pre-sales, Shah Rukh Khan's Jawan. The film releases worldwide on Wednesday, 25 August, including across UAE cinemas.
The 48-hour surge
Industry tracker Sacnilk has Toxic at 3,30,619 tickets sold across 10,963 shows for opening day, worth roughly Rs 13.98 crore (Rs 140 million) in confirmed sales. Factor in blocked seats and the total climbs to approximately Rs 21.98 crore (Rs 220 million). The pace was extraordinary from the first hour.
Tickets worth over Rs 10 crore gross moved in the opening 10 hours. On BookMyShow alone, more than 335,000 tickets went in the first 24 hours, with over 1.2 million users registering interest on the platform.
Faster than Animal, Dhurandhar and Tiger 3
The most telling comparison comes from the earliest window. In its first six hours, Toxic outsold the six-hour tallies of Animal, the first Dhurandhar, Tiger 3 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, according to Bollywood Hungama, which tracked 30,000 tickets in national chains in that stretch.
Toxic moved around 60,000 tickets in the top national chains in its first day, comfortably clear of the 52,500 that Animal managed in the same period.
Among Hindi-belt pre-sales it now sits seventh all-time at that benchmark, still trailing Pushpa 2's 95,000. By late Friday night, PVR Inox and Cinepolis had between them sold over 45,000 tickets for the opening day.
When Shah Rukh Khan’s 2023 blockbuster, Jawan, opened its counters, Sacnilk logged 2,00,454 tickets worth Rs 6.84 crore for its release day. Toxic, a Kannada-origin film with no franchise behind it, is sitting on more than 3.3 lakh tickets and roughly double that revenue figure, with four days still on the clock.
Only one film is ahead
The single benchmark Toxic has not touched is Dhurandhar 2, which recorded around 9.20 lakh advance ticket sales including previews earlier this year and remains, by some distance, the biggest pre-sale of 2026.
Dhurandhar 2 arrived as the sequel to a film that grossed over Rs 1,300 crore worldwide.
Toxic is a standalone original, in Kannada, from a director best known for the festival circuit. It is competing with franchise numbers without a franchise. Trade projections currently put the Hindi opening alone somewhere between Rs 40 crore and Rs 55 crore. Tickets have been priced at the super blockbuster slab, with some Mumbai and Bengaluru premium screens crossing Rs 2,000.
In the UAE tickets for standard viewing start from Dh52 and the film releases on August 25.
