How Puri Jagannadh's Double iSmart Made Profits Despite Fewer Screenings

Puri Jagannadha’s Double iSmart is an action thriller that created a lot of buzz on the internet before its release. However, looks like the audience is quite disappointed with the film and has reviewed it negatively. Its underperformance at the box office has already led to its removal from the theatres right before the first weekend ended. The film is being called a ‘disaster’ and has left viewers wondering about what happened to Puri Jagannadh’s uniqueness in filmmaking.

Double iSmart is headlined by Ram Pothineni and also stars Sanjay Dutt and Kavya Thapar in the lead roles. The film is a spiritual sequel to the 2019 hit Telugu action film iSmart Shankar. As per reports it is made on a budget of Rs 45-50 crore. The film is produced by Puri Jagannadh and Charmy Kaur, under the banner of Puri Connects. The music is composed by Manisharma and the cinematographers are Gianni Giannelli and Shyam K Naidu, while Karthika Srinivas serves as the editor. The pan-Indian film was released in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi.

While the film is being called a disaster, there are reports that despite this, the makers have landed in the safe zone and made profits. Reportedly, the film did a business of Rs 60 crore. This means that the film made a profit of about Rs 10 to 15 crore.

Apart from this, before its release, several reports claimed that the worldwide theatrical rights for Double iSmart had been sold for a whopping Rs 60 crore. A few reports claimed that the audio rights deal has been locked for Rs 9 crore, Rs 33 crore for south digital rights and another Rs 50 crore for satellite rights (Telugu and Hindi) along with Hindi digital. This means, the film has already minted around Rs 150 crore even before its release, by just selling their rights.

Puri Jagannadh has delivered films like Idiot, Pokiri, Sivamani, Bujjigadu, and Businessman. These films are still remembered fondly by the viewers who loved his filmmaking style since he always broke the traditional rules of a hero’s character portrayal. Despite his popularity, he has not been able to deliver hits. After his Liger tanked at the box office, he saw a setback with iSmart Shankar, which had great box office collections but opened to mixed to negative reviews.