The late actor Puneeth Rajkumar’s last action film James is set to be released in five languages - Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi - on March 17, what would have been his 47th birthday. Shooting for the film was almost done when the actor, who was playing the lead, passed away on October 29, 2021. “The film’s dubbing and a song shoot were pending. There is a duet that Puneeth Rajkumar had liked very much, but sadly we couldn’t shoot it,” said filmmaker Chetan Kumar at the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) on Saturday.
Dubbing for the film turned out to be a big hurdle. “We usually record pilot voices of actors during shooting, but as James is an action film mostly set outdoors, we couldn’t remove the noise. So, sadly we couldn’t use Puneeth’s voice. We have done the next best thing we could: Shiva Rajkumar has dubbed for his brother and it has come out very well,” Mr. Kumar said.
Though James will be the last film with Puneeth playing the lead, audiences will see him on screen again in the nature documentary Gandhada Gudi, which he produced and acted in, and in Lucky Man, a film in which he plays an extended cameo.
