Toxic opened with a record Rs 101.10 crore on day one. Three weeks on, that number looks like the high point of a run that's cooled fast, and reports now claim the film's makers may have left money on the table chasing a bigger streaming payday.

According to reports, an OTT platform offered roughly Rs 150 crore for the film's streaming rights before release. The makers reportedly turned it down, betting that a strong theatrical run would push their asking price to Rs 200 crore once the film hit screens. Yash, per these reports, was confident Toxic would clean up at the box office and justify the higher number.

That confidence hasn't quite translated into numbers. The film has grossed Rs 338 crore so far, a big total on paper, but well below what a project with a reported budget of around Rs 600 crore needs to break even, let alone turn a profit. The gap between opening-day fireworks and the steady decline that followed has been the story of Toxic's theatrical run.

What went wrong

Viewers who caught the film have pointed to the screenplay as the problem. Several reports note that audiences walked out confused about what the story was actually trying to say, with the narrative buried under an overload of action set pieces. For a film carrying this kind of budget and this kind of cast, that's the sort of criticism that sticks around longer than a bad opening weekend would.

And there's a lot of cast here to talk about. Toxic brought together Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth as its female leads, opposite Yash in his first release since KGF 2. Reports say multiple big-ticket filmmakers had lined up projects for Yash after that film's success, but he picked Geetu Mohandas's script instead. Geetu, whose last directorial outing was Moothon, hasn't responded to the criticism the film has drawn online.

Whether the OTT deal story is entirely accurate is hard to verify independently. Neither the makers nor any streaming platform has confirmed figures on either side of the negotiation, and the Rs 150 crore and Rs 200 crore numbers are both being reported as trade claims rather than confirmed contracts. If true, though, it's a costly bet. Streaming platforms tend to price deals based on a film's theatrical performance and buzz at the time of negotiation, not on what a studio thinks a film is worth going in.

With collections slowing and no fresh update on where an OTT deal stands now, the question is whether Toxic's makers will get anywhere close to Rs 200 crore, or whether they'll end up settling for less than what was on the table before the film even released. Either way, that number should surface soon enough once a platform is actually named.