Puneeth said that if Fahadh does two versions of Dvitva, he'd emulate him in the other two: Pawan

Kannada filmmaker Pawan Kumar was only days away from beginning work on his film with Power Star Puneeth Rajkumar, Dvitva, for Hombale Films, when the actor passed away tragically on October 29. Dvitva was a project that the late Puneeth was very excited about, considering that Pawan is known for his offbeat style of filmmaking. In fact, even in industry circles, it was believed that this combination would break the traditional superstar formulaic filmmaking and herald an era of stars also doing content-oriented cinema. Sadly, that was not be.

In an interview with a Kannada daily, Pawan spoke about his interactions with Puneeth about the film, most notably one that involved Malayalam actor Fahadh Faasil. “I quite like Malayalam actor Fahad Faasil, as did Puneeth, and he often told me about his fascination for the former’s craft. When we were discussing Dvitva, we had an early conversation about doing it in all four south Indian languages, with Puneeth in the lead role in Kannada and Telugu and Fahad in Malayalam and Tamil. When I proposed this plan to Puneeth at a meeting that included several others from the production house too, he jumped at it, proclaiming his admiration for Fahadh. In fact, he also said that while shooting we should get Fahadh to play the character first and that Puneeth would try and emulate him. Kannada industry’s Power Star does not need to say something like that. Puneeth did not have any airs about being a commercially more viable actor, or performer. It just showed his deep appreciation for another actor. I don’t think we will ever find that kind of honesty again,” said Pawan.

The filmmaker added that Puneeth was a big fan of world cinema and in their interactions over the past 12 years, they’d often spoken about doing something different together. “When I eventually shared the full script of Dvitva with him, there were some suggestions to change the climax around in keeping with popular commercial cinema standards, but Puneeth insisted that we should keep it as has been written. He stood by me and said that this is how global cinema is today,” he says.