Irumudi vs Toxic The New Telugu Screen War

TN Ashok

The Telugu film industry has found itself in an unusual box-office battle — not between two films released on the same day, but between a film that had already established itself with audiences and a much bigger pan-Indian production that arrived later and demanded its screens.

At the centre of the controversy are Ravi Teja's Irumudi and Yash's Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, the Kannada action epic that has been dubbed into Telugu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam.

The dispute has acquired a particularly sharp edge in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where reports say that exhibitors shifted screens from Irumudi to Toxic soon after Yash's film opened on August 26. Producer-distributor Natti Kumar has alleged that nearly 250 theatres were affected. In at least one reported case, audiences in Mahbubnagar protested so strongly that the theatre restored Irumudi. Kumar subsequently claimed that around 30 theatres had brought the film back and that more could follow.

The controversy raises a larger question: who decides what audiences should watch — the people buying tickets or the commercial calculations of exhibitors and distributors?

The unlikely success story of Irumudi. Irumudi, directed by Majili filmmaker Shiva Nirvana and produced by Mythri Movie Makers' Naveen Yerneni and Y. Ravi Shankar stars Ravi Teja in an unusually restrained role.

It is not the conventional Ravi Teja mass entertainer. The film revolves around Trinath, an alcoholic man with a violent past who lives with his wife and young daughter near a waterfall. His daughter becomes the catalyst for his transformation. At her request, he undertakes the 41-day Ayyappa Deeksha, setting in motion a story that mixes family emotion, personal redemption, action and thriller elements.

That religious backdrop initially led many to assume that Irumudi was essentially a Sabarimala or Ayyappa devotional film. Shiva Nirvana specifically clarified before release that it was not a devotional film about the Sabarimala pilgrimage, but a larger family drama with thriller elements.

The film opened on August 21 and apparently found an audience faster than expected.

The latest reported figures put its first seven-day India net collection at about ₹92.15 crore, with India gross around ₹106.95 crore and worldwide gross approximately ₹124.85 crore. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have been its principal market: on the seventh day alone, the two states reportedly contributed about ₹7.25 crore of its ₹8.05 crore India gross.

Those numbers are important because they change the nature of the controversy. If Irumudi had collapsed after its first weekend, replacing it with another film would simply have been commercial housekeeping. But the reported figures suggest a film that was still drawing substantial audiences.

Trade observers therefore began arguing that Irumudi had the potential to reach the ₹200-crore worldwide mark if it retained its screens and momentum. That remains a trade projection, not a guaranteed final collection. But it explains why the sudden loss of screens has generated so much anger.

Toxic is operating on an entirely different scale. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Geetu Mohandas, the film is Yash's first major theatrical release after the extraordinary success of KGF: Chapter 2. It is a period gangster drama set largely in Goa in the years when Portuguese rule was still ending and criminal syndicates were beginning to dominate the underworld.

Yash plays a dual role — Raya and his son Ticket — while Nayanthara plays Ganga, Raya's sister, and Kiara Advani plays Nadia, a circus performer who becomes involved with Raya. Tara Sutaria plays Rebecca, while Huma Qureshi and Rukmini Vasanth are also central to the ensemble.

The film's official premise is essentially one of power, betrayal, loyalty, violence and redemption: a gangster builds a criminal empire in Goa, but the violence and choices that create his kingdom eventually return to destroy him.

Raya and Ganga are children shaped by violence. Raya becomes associated with Salvador, a powerful crime boss involved in the opium trade. He builds his influence across Goa and later Macau, while his personal relationships become increasingly destructive.

Nadia, played by Kiara, enters his life through a circus. Raya falls in love with her and has a child, but ultimately abandons both mother and child. Years later, his son Ticket returns, setting up the film's central father-son conflict.

The film deliberately moves between different periods and locations and uses Yash's dual role to explore inherited violence, guilt and redemption. The climax complicates the apparent reality of the father-son conflict, leaving viewers to question how much of what they have witnessed is literal and how much is psychological.

It is therefore not simply another KGF. But commercially, it has been marketed as the next big Yash event. And that is where the trouble begins for Irumudi.

For exhibitors, Yash is not an ordinary star. KGF: Chapter 1 and particularly KGF: Chapter 2 turned him into a pan-Indian box-office force. Toxic arrived after a long gap, backed by enormous publicity, multiple languages and a large ensemble cast.

It also reportedly secured an A certificate and has a running time of 194 minutes, or more than three hours. The film was released on August 26 across Kannada, English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam markets.

The commercial calculation is obvious.

A theatre owner has a finite number of screens and shows. If a Yash film arrives with enormous advance bookings and nationwide publicity, an exhibitor will naturally want to maximise its allocation during the opening period.

But the problem arises when a running film is removed before its natural theatrical life is over. That is precisely what the Irumudi camp and sections of the Telugu exhibition trade are objecting to.

The most explosive allegation has come from Natti Kumar, who claimed that roughly 250 theatres across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana shifted from Irumudi to Toxic. The allegation has resonated because of reports that audiences themselves protested.

In Mahbubnagar, according to Kumar's account, audiences raised slogans and pressured theatre management to restore Irumudi. He said about 30 theatres had restored the film and suggested that more might follow.

That is significant. The audience is effectively saying: you cannot assume that a star-driven pan-Indian film automatically has a greater right to our screen than the film we have already chosen to watch.

Theatres, distributors and producers, however, operate on commercial contracts and revenue-sharing arrangements. Screen allocation is rarely decided purely by audience sentiment. The real battle is therefore between contractual economics and box-office democracy.

Ironically, Toxic has not arrived without controversy. Before release, its treatment of women had already attracted criticism. The film features five prominent female actors — Kiara Advani, Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria and Rukmini Vasanth — but critics have argued that their characters ultimately revolve around Yash's Raya rather than possessing sufficiently independent narrative arcs.

Kiara has defended her character Nadia, saying that the role offered her emotional range and “all the meat an actor longs for.” She said she was attracted by Geetu Mohandas's narration and the depth of Nadia's character.

Nayanthara has similarly defended Ganga, saying she did not want to appear in a film merely to look good and that Ganga was a strong character in her own right.

Yet the criticism has persisted after release, with reviews arguing that despite its impressive female cast, Toxic ultimately remains overwhelmingly a Yash vehicle.

This creates an intriguing contrast. Irumudi is a male-star film built around family emotion and redemption. Toxic is a much larger, darker gangster spectacle in which women are important to the story but remain connected to the central male character. Both, in different ways, are star vehicles.

The biggest irony is that Toxic does not necessarily need to kill Irumudi to succeed. Its opening was enormous. Early reports put its first-day Indian net collection above ₹100 crore, followed by a sharp second-day decline.

That suggests there may be room for both films. And that is what makes the screen controversy so interesting. A big opening for Toxic does not automatically mean Irumudi has stopped working. Conversely, strong Irumudi collections do not mean exhibitors should ignore a major new release.

The sensible solution may be a gradual screen adjustment based on actual occupancy rather than an abrupt replacement. After all, the audience has already demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of making a choice.

More than a fight between two films. The Irumudi-Toxic dispute is ultimately about the changing economics of Indian cinema. The era when a handful of distributors could simply determine what audiences would see is colliding with an age of social media, advance bookings, real-time occupancy data and increasingly assertive fan communities.

Yash has the enormous advantage of pan-Indian stardom. Ravi Teja has the advantage of a film that appears to have developed strong traction in its home market. One represents scale, spectacle and the pan-Indian blockbuster model.

The other represents regional star power, local cultural resonance and word-of-mouth. The danger for the industry is that the fight could become a zero-sum game. If Toxic is genuinely drawing bigger crowds, it should receive more shows. If Irumudi continues to fill theatres, it deserves to retain them.

The box office, ultimately, should decide. The most revealing part of the controversy may therefore be what happened when audiences reportedly protested the removal of Irumudi. For once, the audience was not merely buying a ticket.

It was demanding the right to decide which ticket it wanted to buy. (IPA Service)