MUMBAI: Actor-comedian Danish Sait says Puneeth Rajkumar had thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated his Kannada film "One Cut Two Cut", which was backed by the late superstar's production house.
The comedy-adventure film is directed by Vamsidhar Bhogaraju and produced by Puneeth's wife Ashwini Puneeth Rajkumar and Gurudatha Talwar under the PRK Productions banner.
"One Cut Two Cut" happens to be the one of the last production projects that was kick-started by the actor-producer, who passed away last year in October.
Sait shared that Puneeth had watched the film last year and was quite happy with the way it had turned out.
"Mr Puneeth was extremely cognisant of the fact that there are two kinds of cinema, one that needs the big stars to draw in the crowds and then these boutique high-concept ones, which are small and tiny. And a platform like Amazon Prime Video can (help) reach out to people from across the world," Sait told PTI in a Zoom interview.
"When he saw the film, he enjoyed it, laughed. He was very appreciative of the crew and the team and whatever we had done," he added.
The 33-year-old actor, known for Kannada films like Humble Politician Nograj, French Biriyani and Hindi web series Afsos, also said that Puneeth suggested they begin work on their next project together.
"His advice to us was 'Alright, this is done. Now move on to the next film', which we are writing. We are hoping that we have PRK Productions show the same faith that they have shown in me and the team," he added.
Speaking about the equation that Sait shared with Puneeth, he said, the superstar was more like a friend and mentor to him.
"He had produced a film of mine ('French Biriyani') before this and we were talking about doing another film and we had this idea. For us PRK Productions is home, I wouldn't go anywhere else. I wouldn't mind going there a hundred more times to get my scripts produced to life. When you're an outsider, he was basically the one insider who said 'welcome'. He was family," the actor, who is the brother of "Sacred Games" breakout Kubbra Sait, added.
PRK Productions is a reflection of Puneeth's ideology, he said.
"They're extremely large-hearted and very supportive of young talent."
"One Cut Two Cut" is a satirical comedy that revolves around an art and crafts teacher Gopi (Sait), whose first day at work becomes a task of saving the school which has been taken hostage by four radical social media activists.
The actor said his character was initially created for his online comedy videos a year-and-half-ago.
"I put an ad for a man named Gopi, who is a simple person wanting to get married. Within a few hours I received hundreds of emails. And that's how Gopi came about," he said.
"My friend Vamsi, who is the director, and I wrote this story together and established Gopi, as a character around whom we could revolve a film. We came up with this idea of him being an arts and crafts teacher in the middle of terrorist attack. We thought it was a fun idea," he added.
Also starring Prakash Belawadi, Samyukta Hornad, Vineeth Beep' Kumar and Sampath Maitreya, "One Cut Two Cut" is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.