Darling Krishna’s Luckyman to release on September 2?

When Darling Krishna’s next release, Luckyman, was announced, it sparked a lot of interest when it was announced that Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar would be seen in it in a pivotal role. The bigger highlight was that the actor, who was a phenomenal dancer, had a special dance number with one of the country’s best choreographers, Prabhudeva, in the film. That, of course, happened because Luckyman was being directed by Prabhudeva’s brother, S Nagendra Prasad. There was a lot of excitement around seeing Puneeth match steps with Prabhudeva or the other way around.

Then, tragically, Kannada cinema lost Puneeth last year. At the time, he was shooting for his last commercial film as hero, James, had completed his portions for Luckyman, but had not dubbed for it. Nagendra Prasad had said that he and his team would be able to salvage the late actor’s audio from the shoot, as most of his portions were shot indoors. From the teaser that was released today, it appears that they were quite successful in retaining Puneeth’s voice. But then they also had the option of using the same technology that the team of James used much later, wherein multiple samples of Puneeth’s voice from films, interviews, TV programmes, etc., were used to create his audio track for the film.

The film has been ready for a while, but now we hear that the team is looking at fixing a release date shortly. At first, the buzz was that it could target an August 12 release. The Varamahalakshmi festival window is right now held only by Yogaraj Bhat’s Gaalipata 2. But with just over two weeks to go, it is unlikely that Luckyman will announce that date in a hurry. August 19 is already booked by two films. So, the next best bet, it is indicated is September 2. There is no official confirmation on this, but industry insiders are quite confident that it will be finalized shortly.