It is very rare to see Puneeth Rajkumar getting furious. But recently, he was reportedly enraged with distributor Prasad at a recent press meet of 'Kannadada Kotyadipathi'. According to Puneeth, Prasad was making a fool of himself with unnecessary remarks about the Rajkumar family. He said, “I don’t care about his comments as we have produced around 80 films under our banner and have given employment to lots of people. I have met Prasad only a couple of times. It was he who was keen to become the distributor for Anna Bond and later withdrew.”
Puneeth was reacting to Prasad’s comments made at an audio launch where the distributor is claimed to have made a statement saying that ‘a production house which had about 60-70 films to their credit is making bad films resulting in huge losses’. This did not go down well with Puneeth, who spoke on behalf his family.
Distributor Prasad, who is aware of the latest developments, wants to end it once for all and said he did not want to react to everything as his statement did not point to a particular production house. “If they react to my comments, I can’t help it. I respect the Rajkumar family. It is not my fault if they go by the bits and pieces that came out from my talk. Instead of analysing what I spoke, they just went by what people told them and reacted ,” said Prasad.
According to locals in Gandhinagar, the distributor never takes back his word once he promises something but at the same time would never want to get into any business if he doesn’t like, even if he gets back ` 10 crores.
“I have been in this industry for the past six months and I know the inside story about many people. Now I have left it to God as I am not ready to wash my dirty linen in public. I attend functions because of friendship and not for publicity. I get enough publicity with my public talk on shares, which I have every three days of the week. I have fans across the globe, who want to discuss about the stock market. I came to the film industry because of my passion. But it has taken an ugly turn,” he says.
Prasad has decided to finally call it quits to distribution and financing films. “Distributors and financiers are hesitating to put in their money in films as it is just becoming too complicated. Even I have decided, after my three pending projects -Godfather, Varadhanayaka and Rajanikantha, that I will not distribute or finance any more films. Instead, I will start my own production house and produce films under my own banner and be the king of my own domain,” he said.
The distributor who is quite upset with the incident said, “We are very private people and don’t like to be in public view all the time. We did not have any misunderstanding with each other. They have mistaken my comment and read between the lines. I don’t want to go against anybody and I want to just concentrate on my work,” said Prasad.
He remembers Raghavendra Rajkumar’s advice to him. “He had told me that as a celebrity we need to pay a price and one has to control themselves. I had taken his word and followed his thoughts. He had also told me that auditor should worry about my accounts and not the media.
This incident has taught me a big lesson. I will henceforth not interfere in other films and will soon start doing films on my own,” he concluded.