Gana teaser: Director has remade his Telugu film with Prajwal Devaraj in the lead, say netizens

Prajwal Devaraj’s next release will, in all probability, be Gana, which is Hari Prasad Jakka’s debut in Sandalwood. The team has said precious little about the film so far, until the teaser, which was released on the occasion of Prajwal’s birthday. The film, it appears, is an action-packed entertainer, in which Prajwal is paired with Yasha Shivakumar, while Vedhika also plays a pivotal role. But unlike routine commercial entertainers, this one, it seems has a scientific angle to do with time.

While the teaser did not reveal much more, based on the few fleeting visuals, netizens have come to the conclusion hat Hari Prasad has chosen to remake one of his earlier films for his Kannada cinema debut. According to the buzz on social media, Gana is the official remake of the 2021 Telugu film Play Back. The original film starred Dinesh Tej, Ananya Nagalla, Arjun Kalyan, and Spandana, among others, and was about two people from two different time periods who connect over a phone call.

According to reports, Play Back was about a crime reporter called Karthik, who begins receiving calls from someone called Sujatha on the landline in the house he has rented out. When the duo eventually realize that they belong to two different, he helps her set her future right, by changing events in the past (her present).

The film received lukewarm reviews, with several opining that the film was inspired by series like Dark and Signal. Incidentally, this concept of parallel universes was explored in Kannada cinema earlier in Priyanka Upendra’s 1980, which released directly on Namma Flix during the pandemic. In the film, Priyanka played a writer from the 80s, who is able to make contact with someone in 2000 over a phone call.