Inside Talk: Why did Agent cost Rs 80 crore?

Akhil Akkineni pinned a lot of his hopes on Agent which was promoted as a power packed action thriller. But after the release, the film is being termed a disaster by the critics and the common audience alike.

Interestingly, the producer of the film, Anil Sunkara had mentioned that they spent Rs 80 crores on the project. Given that this has come from the producer himself, one might have to believe it.

But why did the producer spend Rs 80 crore on a film with Akhil who doesn’t even have half the market valuation? What is the reason behind the extra spending that is out of proportion.

Apparently, Surender Reddy had called for many reshoots in every stage of the filming process. This resulted in the film’s budget almost doubling in the full course.

The idea first was to make the film on a budget of Rs 40 crore with Akhil’s market in mind. But with all the reshoots and the subsequent pile up of production costs, the overall costs incurred to the producer ended up costing him double the money.

Reshoots are a costly affair and more often, they are for only a minor portion that the director feels should be shot at all costs. But in case of Agent, many episodes and sequences were reshot entirely which greatly piled up the costs.