Yash's Toxic Opens to Enormous Advance Booking and a Rockier Critical Reception

Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups arrived in theatres today across more than 12,000 screens worldwide, closing out the advance booking window with roughly 57.74 crore gross in India alone and over 18 lakh tickets sold before a single paying audience had seen the film. That scale of pre-release demand puts it in rare company for a Kannada-language release, trailing only Yash's own KGF: Chapter 2 in that specific category.

The reception since screenings began has been considerably more mixed than the advance numbers suggested it might be. Early reviews and social reactions have leaned toward disappointment, with recurring complaints about writing that doesn't match the visual scale, and comparisons to KGF that the film doesn't come out ahead in. None of this necessarily dictates where the film lands commercially, since advance-heavy openings can still convert into a strong opening day regardless of review sentiment, but it does complicate the story of an unusually anticipated comeback.

The reception since screenings began has been considerably more mixed than the advance numbers suggested it might be.

Directed by Geetu Mohandas and shot simultaneously in Kannada and English, the film casts Yash in a dual role as a gangster navigating post-independence Goa, alongside Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth. Actual Day 1 collection figures hadn't settled into a clear, sourced number as of this writing; we'll have a verified total once the day's numbers are in.