The Telugu film industry is still tallying the wreckage of one of its most expensive misfires in recent memory. "Double iSmart," the sequel to the 2019 hit "iSmart Shankar," arrived in theatres on August 15, 2024, carrying enormous expectations and a reported combination of two of the biggest names in commercial cinema - director Puri Jagannadh and Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt. What followed, according to industry insiders, was a financial disaster that left the film's financiers nursing losses reportedly touching Rs 35 crore. The movie's TMDb rating sits at a dismal 3.6 out of 10 - a number that tells its own story about how audiences received the finished product.
The film was designed as a head-on collision between two unstoppable forces. Sanjay Dutt plays Big Bull, a feared assassin obsessed with cheating death by transferring his memories into another man's mind. That man is Ram Pothineni's iSmart Shankar, who is already carrying someone else's memories inside him. The setup promised a brutal, high-concept face-off between a killer who refuses to die and a hero who is no longer entirely himself. On paper, it read like vintage Puri Jagannadh territory - loud, fast, and built around a larger-than-life protagonist. On screen, critics and paying audiences alike felt the execution fell far short of the pitch, and the damage to the film's backers was swift and severe.
The Business of Broken Trust
The most damaging allegations surrounding "Double iSmart" have nothing to do with its reviews. They centre on how the project was financed and who was left holding the bag when it collapsed. Reports circulating in the Telugu film trade suggest that investors were drawn in by a combination of star power and aggressive persuasion - and that when the returns failed to materialise, the fallout was catastrophic for those who had put money on the table. The phrase making the rounds in industry circles is blunt: cheating, followed by blackmail. Whether those accusations will ever be tested in a court of law remains unclear, but the reputational cost has already been paid in the currency that matters most in Tollywood - trust.
For a director of Puri Jagannadh's stature, the stakes could hardly be higher. He built his career on a signature style of raw, mass-appeal storytelling, and "iSmart Shankar" was one of his biggest recent successes. A sequel should have been a victory lap. Instead, "Double iSmart" has become a cautionary tale about what happens when a franchise is extended without a clear reason to exist. The 162-minute runtime, which in theory allowed room for elaborate action set pieces and sci-fi world-building, seems to have worked against the film - bloated where it needed to be tight, indulgent where it needed discipline.
A Cast Stranded by the Material
Ram Pothineni returns as Shankar with the same kinetic energy that made the first film work, but even his committed performance could not rescue a screenplay that struggled to justify its own existence. Sanjay Dutt, making his Telugu debut in a full-fledged antagonist role, brings genuine menace to Big Bull - a character whose desire for immortality gives the film its only genuinely intriguing idea. The supporting cast, including Kavya Thapar as Jannat, Sayaji Shinde as CBI Officer Chandrakanth, Getup Srinu as Shankar's friend, Makrand Deshpande, Temper Vamsi, and Gurbani Judge as Bentley, is populated with capable performers who simply do not get enough to do.
The genres attached to the film - action, science fiction, thriller - suggest a movie trying to be several things at once. The result, according to most accounts, is a film that never fully commits to any of them. Science fiction demands internal logic; "Double iSmart" reportedly treats its memory-transfer premise as a convenience rather than a foundation. Thrillers demand tension; this one substitutes volume for suspense. Action demands clarity; the set pieces, however elaborate, apparently lacked the visceral punch that Telugu audiences have come to expect as a baseline.
What Comes Next
The financial wounds from "Double iSmart" will not heal quickly. Producers who backed the project are reportedly reluctant to discuss it on the record, which is itself a telling sign of how badly the experience went. For Ram Pothineni, the setback is significant but not career-ending - he remains one of Telugu cinema's more bankable young stars. For Sanjay Dutt, a first outing in the Telugu industry that he would probably prefer to forget. For Puri Jagannadh, the question is whether he can rebuild the confidence of the people who fund his films. In an industry where relationships between directors and financiers are often as important as the scripts themselves, that may prove the hardest battle of all.
What "Double iSmart" ultimately demonstrates is that neither star power nor franchise familiarity can substitute for a story worth telling. Telugu audiences have shown repeatedly that they will reward ambition, originality, and craft. They have also shown, with equal consistency, that they will punish cynicism. On this occasion, the punishment was brutal - and the ledger, for everyone involved, is still bleeding red.
Source: Filmibeat Telugu
