Toxic finally released on August 26, five months after its original March 19 date — and after two separate delays along the way. The film was first pushed to June 4 over Middle East instability concerns, then pushed again before landing on its Onam and Eid-e-Milad weekend release. What's easy to miss in that timeline: the original March 19 date would have put Yash's film directly opposite Dhurandhar 2 on the same weekend.

Why did Toxic keep moving its release date?

That's worth sitting with, because we've argued on this site before that Bollywood's habit of clashing big releases head-on serves the studios' competitive instincts more than it serves audiences or the films themselves. Toxic's release history is the opposite instinct in action — a genuinely massive tentpole, reportedly among the most expensive Indian films ever made, quietly sidestepping a fight with the year's biggest Hindi blockbuster not once but across three separate scheduling decisions.

The official reasoning each time pointed to external factors, not competitive strategy. But three delays landing the film safely clear of Dhurandhar 2's release window either way is the kind of pattern that's hard to read as pure coincidence.

How did Toxic perform at the box office?

Whatever the actual reasoning, the outcome speaks for itself. Toxic opened across roughly 12,000 cinemas worldwide, trade estimates pointed to a ₹100–120 crore opening weekend target, and early tracking has the film's India net collection already well past that mark within its first few days of release. That's a result a film competing directly against 2026's dominant box office story might not have gotten the chance to build the same way.

None of this proves dodging a rival is always the right call — a clash can just as easily work in a strong film's favor by turning a release into an event. But Toxic's slow, repeatedly-rescheduled path to release, whatever drove it, ended with the film getting a wide-open weekend almost entirely to itself. Compared to Awarapan 2 and Batwara 1947 splitting an Independence Day audience down the middle a few weeks earlier, that's a very different bet — and on the numbers so far, the more patient one paid off.