India's biggest flop film featured superstar and star kid, began production without bound script, was released on OTT after two years, earned only Rs...

Starring Mammootty and Nagarjuna's son Akhil Akkineni, the Telugu spy action thriller Telugu bombed at the box office. The 2023 film started streaming on SonyLIV in March 2025.

Aman Wadhwa

Updated : Apr 05, 2025, 04:35 PM IST | Edited by : Aman Wadhwa

India's biggest flop film featured superstar and star kid, began production without bound script, was released on OTT after two years, earned only Rs...

India's biggest flop is Agent

From Ram Charan and Kiara Advani-starrer Shankar's Game Changer to Suriya and Bobby Deol-starrer Siva's Kanguva, the south Indian film industry has also seen some of the biggest flops in the recent years. Another addition to this list is the 2023 Telugu spy action thriller Agent, which turned out to be one of the biggest box office bombs in Indian cinema.

Directed by Surender Reddy, Agent was headlined by the Malayalam superstar Mammootty and the star kid Akhil Akkineni, son of the Telugu superstar Nagarjuna and actress Amala Akkineni. Dino Morea played the antagonist the the film, which also starred Vikramjeet Virk, Sakshi Vaidya, Sushant Singh, Denzil Smith, Anu Prabhakar, and Murali Sharma in the supporting roles.

The film was announced in 2020 and faced multiple delays due to extensive production and the Covid-19 pandemic. When Agent was finally released in the theatres in 2023, it was completely rejected by the audiences and the critics. Made in the reported budget of Rs 85 crore, Agent became a huge commercial failure and earned just Rs 10 crore net in India, as per the entertainment tracking portal Sacnilk.

After its box office debacle, the producer Anil Sunkara apologised to the audiences and admitted that the production began without a bound script. Taking to his social media, he wrote, "We have to take the entire blame for Agent. Though we know its an uphill task, we thought of conquering but failed to do so as we did a blunder starting the project without a bound script & innumerable issues including covid followed. We don't want to give any excuses but learn from this costly mistake and see how we can turnaround to make sure, we will never repeat the mistakes. Our sincere apologies to all those who put trust on us. We will make it up for the losses with dedicated planning & hardwork in our future projects."

Akhil Akkineni also penned an open letter to his fans on his social media, in which he wrote, "To my dearest fans and all my well wishers. I want to sincerely thank the cast and crew of Agent who dedicated their lives to see our film come to life. While we tried our level best, the film unfortunately didn't translate the way we wished it would on the screen and we could not deliver a good film for you. A special thanks to my producer Anil garu who was my biggest support system. Thank you to all the distributors who believed in our film and also the media who supported us immensely. The love and energy you all give me is the reason I work and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that. I will come back stronger for all those who believe in me. Yours faithfully Akhil Akkineni."

pic.twitter.com/MxG9cT5c19
— Akhil Akkineni (@AkhilAkkineni8) May 15, 2023

We have to take the entire blame for #Agent. Though we know its an uphill task, we thought of conquering but failed to do so as we did a blunder starting the project without a bound script & innumerable issues including covid followed. We don't want to give any excuses but learn…
— Anil Sunkara (@AnilSunkara1) May 1, 2023

Two years after its theatrical release in April 2023, Agent started streaming on SonyLIV in March 2025 in the original Telugu language and the dubbed versions in Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada languages. There has been no update about the digital release of the dubbed Hindi version.