Toxic: the advance is now measurable, not projected.
Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups opens Wednesday Aug 26 in six languages across a reported 12,000 screens worldwide. Directed by Geetu Mohandas for KVN Productions, with Yash alongside Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth.
For once we are not guessing at the chain advance. Nishit Shaw logged 60,000 national-chain tickets in the first 24 hours, ahead of Animal's 52,500 and behind Pushpa 2's 95,000 — seventh on the all-time Hindi 24-hour board. By Monday it stood at 136,000–140,000, closing near 200,000–210,000.
Running it through the conversion table
Our conversion model takes the final chain advance in lakhs and applies the crore-per-lakh ratio drawn from nineteen verified films. In the 2.00–2.99 lakh band, Saiyaara converted at 10.5, Chhaava at 13.9 and Stree 2 at 18.2, and the ratio climbs the less those chains represent a film's real audience. Toxic's advances are strongest outside the chains by the trade's own account, in tier-two and tier-three single screens, which puts it at the top of that band.
2.05 lakh × 18 = ₹37 Cr Hindi. Bollywood Hungama, working independently, calls ₹35–40 Cr. Two methods landing on the same answer is the standard we hold ourselves to before publishing.
What ₹86 Cr would mean. The biggest opening day of 2026 in India, and comfortably the biggest ever for a Kannada-origin film. Our Kannada line is the cautious one: KGF: Chapter 2 did roughly ₹25 Cr in Kannada, and Karnataka's screen count caps how far past that anyone can go, however hot the advance looks.
Where the upside sits. Andhra has cleared a price hike — 6 AM shows flat at ₹500–600, ₹50–100 on regular tickets for five days. Pure margin on our ₹12 Cr Telugu line.
Estimated Top 10 · Fri 28 – Sun 30 Aug
Toxic is on Day 3 by Friday. Everything else is a holdover, and a 12,000-screen release does not arrive without taking inventory from somebody.
| # | Film | 3-day est | Cumul by Aug 30 | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toxic 6 languages · Day 3–5 | ₹95–120 Cr | ~₹215 Cr | NEW |
| 2 | Irumudi Telugu · Week 2 | ₹18–24 Cr | ~₹100 Cr | HOLD |
| 3 | Awarapan 2 Hindi · Week 3 | ₹8–11 Cr | ~₹152 Cr | FADE |
| 4 | Khalifa Malayalam · Week 2 | ₹6–9 Cr | ~₹31 Cr | FADE |
| 5 | Insidious: Out of the Further English · Week 2 | ₹5–7 Cr | ~₹21 Cr | FADE |
| 6 | Khosla Ka Ghosla 2 Hindi · Week 1 | ₹3–6 Cr | ₹3–6 Cr | NEW |
| 7 | Vishwanath & Sons Tamil+Telugu · Week 3 | ₹3–4.5 Cr | ~₹107 Cr | SCREENS CUT |
| 8 | Hanuman Ansh Hindi · Week 4 | ₹2–3.5 Cr | ~₹10 Cr | HOLD |
| 9 | DC Tamil · Week 4 | ₹2–3 Cr | ~₹70 Cr | SCREENS CUT |
| 10 | Spider-Man: Brand New Day English · Week 5 | ₹2–3 Cr | ~₹495 Cr | WINDING DOWN |
Toxic is going to empty this board. A 12,000-screen release takes inventory from everything below it, and the films marked in grey are the ones giving it up. Vishwanath & Sons and DC both lose their strongest circuits — Toxic's Telugu and Kannada tracks land directly on top of them. Spider-Man is at Day 26 and has had its run. Batwara 1947 leaves the ten entirely, having never recovered once the Independence Day audience went home.
The row we are least sure about is Hanuman Ansh. The devotional drama went from ₹5 lakh on a Thursday to ₹2.58 Cr on the following Sunday — a 52× move in three days, with its third weekend running 5.8× its own opening weekend. Every decay curve we own says it should be finished. Two weeks of evidence say otherwise. We have it holding, and if it beats ₹3.5 Cr this weekend our model has a category problem, not a rounding problem.
US Top 10: the $100M streak goes to the wire.
Rentrak's actuals for last weekend: Spider-Man: Brand New Day $39.0M for a fourth straight win, Insidious $25.3M, The Odyssey $19.5M. Spider-Man sits at $842.6M domestic through 23 days. The Odyssey has now passed Deadpool & Wolverine to become the biggest R-rated release in history at $1.34B.
Three wide releases land Friday: Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars, the Cliffhanger reboot, and Coyote vs. ACME, rescued from Warner's write-off pile by Ketchup.
| # | Film | Boxoffy call | Last wknd | Drop |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spider-Man: Brand New Day Sony · Week 5 | $21.5M | $39.0M | −45% |
| 2 | The Dog Stars 20th Century · NEW | $15.0M | — | NEW |
| 3 | The Odyssey Universal · Week 7 | $13.6M | $19.5M | −30% |
| 4 | Insidious: Out of the Further Sony · Week 2 | $11.4M | $25.3M | −55% |
| 5 | Coyote vs. ACME Ketchup · NEW | $8.0M | — | NEW |
| 6 | Cliffhanger NEW | $7.0M | — | NEW |
| 7 | PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie Paramount · Week 3 | $5.0M | $9.1M | −45% |
| 8 | The End of Oak Street Warner Bros. · Week 3 | $4.5M | $9.0M | −50% |
| 9 | Mutiny Lionsgate · Week 2 | $3.8M | $7.5M | −50% |
| 10 | Tony A24 · Week 2 | $3.0M | $5.0M | −40% |
Watch the streak. Our top ten totals $92.8M, down 24% on last weekend's $122.5M. Add the business below the top ten and the market lands near $100M — the threshold it has cleared for eighteen weekends running, a streak last seen in summer 2023. It could break this weekend, and it comes down to where The Dog Stars opens in its range.
Why we go under Boxoffice Pro on The Dog Stars
Boxoffice Pro has it at $18–23M. We call $15M, band $11–20M. Post-apocalyptic films have landed under forecast with unusual consistency — The Creator at $14M, Greenland 2 at $8.4M, Resident Evil: Raccoon City at $5.3M, even Furiosa at $26.3M. Jacob Elordi did open Wuthering Heights to $32.8M in February, but he had Margot Robbie beside him, a Valentine's date and a much bigger campaign. Against a $110M budget, even the top of Boxoffice Pro's range leaves 20th Century short.
Owning last week's failure. We modelled five films and three of the actual top ten never appeared — an A24 title at seven, a Fast & Furious re-release at eight, a MUBI release at ten. Our arithmetic came in 4.0% off; our coverage was the problem. This week we model ten, including Tony, the film we missed.
Off the big screen: what moves to OTT.
Three Hindi trailers landed on one Tuesday.
Aug 25 was crowded. The Vvaan and Gunmaaster G9 dropped teasers and Haiwaan put out its trailer, all in the same news cycle and all inside Toxic's release week. Somebody chose that, and it is worth asking whether it helps.
Asset stage — a trailer is a second-look asset; a teaser is a first.
Distribution — theatrical attachment vs digital-only. The single biggest separator here, and the reason the film 94 days out beats the one 31 days out.
Star momentum — the lead's last theatrical result.
Package — how the director and genre have performed together before.
Each scored 0–20.
The December 18 board: no movement, and that is the update.
Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three still share Dec 18, and since our T-117 post three days ago nothing has changed. Doomsday's last disclosed domestic presale sits near $39M, more than double the $16.5M first-24-hour figure from July. Warner has disclosed nothing at any point for Dune.
Our position is unchanged. Doomsday runs ~$10,263 per site across ~3,800 locations; our model puts Dune at $22.4M from ~985 premium-only sites — $22,736 per site. Dune is doing 2.2× per site from a quarter of the footprint, with no standard-screen sale open.
Why publish a no-change update. If a tracker only posts when the number moves, readers learn to read silence as nothing happening. Four months out, one studio is disclosing weekly and the other has disclosed nothing at all. That gap is worth reporting even on a quiet week. Next check T-112, Friday Aug 28.
The questions people are asking.
₹86 Cr net, band ₹68–106. Hindi ₹37 Cr, Kannada ₹28 Cr, Telugu ₹12 Cr, Tamil ₹5 Cr, Malayalam ₹3 Cr, English ₹1 Cr.
₹128 Cr gross, band ₹105–155 — about ₹101 Cr India gross plus roughly ₹27 Cr overseas.
Wednesday 26 August 2026, in six languages across a reported 12,000 screens worldwide. Directed by Geetu Mohandas, produced by KVN Productions.
60,000 national-chain tickets in the first 24 hours — past Animal's 52,500, behind Pushpa 2's 95,000. At 136,000–140,000 by Aug 24, closing near 200,000–210,000.
Our model. Take the final PVR, INOX and Cinepolis advance in lakhs of tickets, apply the crore-per-lakh ratio drawn from nineteen verified films. The ratio climbs the less those chains represent a film's real audience.
We call Spider-Man: Brand New Day $21.5M, The Dog Stars $15.0M, The Odyssey $13.6M, Insidious $11.4M. Top ten $92.8M.
On the horizon.
Sept 11 is the next real date: Haiwaan. Until then the board belongs to Toxic, and the question stops being how big the opening is and becomes how fast Karnataka saturates. Kannada-origin films have a ceiling Hindi and Telugu do not — week two tells us whether the pan-India rollout is carrying the film or the home market is.
Beyond that: Diwali and Ramayana: Part One on Nov 6 — also Yash. This fortnight is a live read on his post-KGF pull ahead of the biggest Indian release of the decade.