Maarigallu: Will there be more of Puneeth Rajkumar’s AI avatar in latest Kannada series?

Maarigallu: The teaser of Maarigallu featured an animated version of Puneeth Rajkumar as Mayurasharma, the founder of the Kadamba dynasty

The AI avatar of Puneeth as Mayurasharma in the Maarigallu teaser

When the teaser of the upcoming Kannada web series Maarigallu dropped, fans of the late Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar could barely contain their excitement. In establishing the basic premise of the show, which is about the hunt for a lost treasure from the erstwhile Kadamba dynasty, the teaser featured an AI avatar of Puneeth as Mayurasharma, the founder of the Kadamba dynasty. The show, fans reckoned, would have more of this.

Animated version of Puneeth was only a tribute

But on October 23, when the trailer of the show dropped, there was no sign of this, which had audiences wondering how much screen space would be devoted to this backstory with Puneeth. Speaking at the trailer launch, Pradeepa, the head of Kannada originals at Zee Network, clarified that the AI visuals of Puneeth, as seen in the teaser, would not be a part of the show. “That was a special tribute that we added to the teaser, with the permission of Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar,” said Pradeepa.

Maarigallu is a 7-episode Kannada web series written and directed by Devaraj Poojary, who’d earlier made the Pruthvi Ambaar starrer Matsyagandha. Praveen Tej, Rangayana Raghu, Gopalkrishna Deshpande, Prashant Siddi, Ninad, A Suraj Nidhi Hegde, Raghavi, Mime Ramdas, Parashuram, Raghu Pandeshwar, Shivaprakash Punja, Ranjan Shetty, Naveen Bondel, Ranjan, Uday Halambi, Nagaraj Byndoor, Sagar Hegde, M.K Bhut, Subash Achari, among others, are on the cast of the show.

Also read: Maarigallu trailer: Praveen Tej leads a dangerous hunt for a lost Kadamba treasure

The third Kannada original show commissioned by Zee Network, Maarigallu will drop on Zee5 (via OTTplay Premium also) on October 31. The earlier two were Ayyana Mane and Shodha. Pradeepa says that there will be at least 5 more shows before the end of the financial year, 2 of which are currently in production.

FAQs

Q. Which is the first Z55 original Kannada web series?

A. Ayyana Mane, directed by Ramesh Indira and starring Dia-fame Kushee Ravi in the lead was the first original Kannada series on Zee5. It came out in April to middling reviews.

Q. Which was the second show?

A. After Ayyana Mane came Shodha, a remake of Zee5's Hindi series Khoj- Parchaiyon Ke Uss Paar. Directed by Sunil Mysuru, it had actor-filmmaker Pawan Kumar in the lead.

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