James FDFS: It's a festive atmosphere at theatres, fans burst crackers, go ballistic watching Puneeth Rajkumar on the big screen

What better joy than watching the film of your most beloved star on their birthday? James, the last film that Puneeth Rajkumar had shot for, couldn't have timed its release better on his birthday, i.e. today March 17. All traces of shock, sadness that we had while hearing about Puneeth's untimely death will be replaced by joy, euphoria and madness at theatres today as fans get to watch him play a soldier in James, a film directed by Chethan Kumar. Puneeth was paired opposite Priya Anand in the same, his second film with the actress after Daring Raajakumara.

Fans of the star lined up as early as midnight to the various theatres across the states and started bursting crackers to express their happiness of watching a Puneeth Rajkumar film on the big screen again. It's as if they are committed to pay a grand homage to the actor one last time. This is of course an emotional moment for them, where they are joyous and sad at the same time, but they're doing everything they can to celebrate their beloved star's persona. Here's what they have to say in Twitter. 

The special moment for the fans of course was watching Puneeth Rajkumar in his introduction sequence and most fans of his are sharing that memory on social media. Isn't that the beauty of cinema too? It has the ability to convince you that what you're watching is for real. At least, for the next two and a half hours, Appu's fans will genuinely believe that he's among us and make his swansong a major hit. The bigger joy this time is also the fact that Puneeth's film will be releasing across five languages including Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi.

As many as 1000 shows of James in Karnataka are sold out today. Big celebrities are also queueing up at the theatres to watch Puneeth's film. There's no better time than now for the Kannada industry to come together to offer a grand finale to the star's prolific career. Srikanth, Anu Prabhakar, Sarathkumar too play key roles in James, which has cinematography by Swamy J Gowda, edited by Deepu S Kumar and music by Charan Raj.