Duniya Suri says he made Puneeth Rajkumar’s Doddmane Huduga as best as he could

When Duniya Suri got to make a second film with the late Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar, after their blockbuster collaboration, Jackie, the result was Doddmane Huduga. While the film was a commercial success, the widespread feedback about it was that it was run-of-the-mill. Suri was also quoted as saying that Doddmane Huduga could have, perhaps, been done a lot better.

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Speaking to National TV ahead of the re-release of Jackie, which is being brought in 4k format on the occasion of the late Puneeth Rajkumar’s birth anniversary, Suri said that he made Doddmane Huduga to the best of his capabilities. A film with both Ambareesh and Puneeth was a major responsibility that worried Suri a lot about how to do justice to them both.

The story of Doddmane Huduga was by Vikas, which Suri then worked on, and even though V Harikrishna came on board as composer, and Yogaraj Bhat as lyricist, the filmmaker could not help but shake the feeling that it was way too much like a Telugu movie. “I realized that this is not my style of film and the minute that struck, what I did was to package it neatly,” says Suri, adding that throughout the making of the film, he was concerned about how it would shape up onscreen.

Meanwhile, talking about the re-release of Jackie, Suri added that the remastered audio of the film will be a major highlight, as it has been upgraded for today’s technical standards. Jackie, he adds, was one of two stories that Puneeth and his mother Parvathamma Rajkumar had liked and approved, but one subject required a massive budget, so, Suri took a creative call to make Jackie first.

Suri on Puneeth Rajkumar’s Jackie: The first report was that audiences did not like how we presented Appu sir 

In another recent interview, Suri also revealed that the initial response to Jackie was far from what they expected and that audiences did not like the fact that he had presented the actor like a pakka ‘local’ guy. That Puneeth was wearing slippers for the most part in the film and even holding a chicken, among others, did not sit well with audiences at first, but over time, that changed around and they began appreciating the depth in the subject, following which it became a blockbuster.