James

Action Comedy Drama

Kannada

March 17, 2022

2hr 29min

Status: released

Trailer, Teaser & Videos

Poster & Photos

Where to Watch James (Stream)

SonyLiv

This is Puneeth’s posthumous appearance following his death on 29 October 2021.
The film marked the second collaboration between Puneeth, Priya and Sarathkumar after Raajakumara (2017).
Prior to his demise, Puneeth had finished most part of the shoot except one song and voice dubbing. The movie team tried its best to retain Puneeth’s voice captured during shoot but when it seemed difficult, Shiva Rajkumar, the eldest brother of Puneeth, dubbed for his brother’s character in the Kannada version.
The integral portions of the film has been shot in Bengaluru.
The film is produced by Kishore Pathikonda under the banner Kishore Productions.
The first schedule of the shoot started from 19 January 2020 in Bengaluru. The second schedule of the film started from 14 October 2020 in Hampi.
A quick schedule was also wrapped in February 2021 in Kashmir featuring important action sequences of Puneeth Rajkumar. After returning from Kashmir, Puneeth became busy in the promotional activities of his other film, Yuvarathnaa which released on 1 April amidst the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The James team resumed shoot once again from 5 July at a brisk pace after the Government of Karnataka gave nod to restart filming activities.
James was released in theatres on 17 March 2022 in Kannada alongside dubbed versions in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. It released in 4000 screens on the first day including 400 single screen theaters in Karnataka alone and 900 shows in multiplexes making it the biggest release at that time in Karnataka. The Telugu film RRR had postponed its release by one week due to release of this film.
On 18 April 2022, Chethan Kumar announced that a Hyderabad-based team was able to recreate Puneeth’s voice using Shivrajkumar’s modulation and Puneeth’s voice samples from his previous films and hosting endeavors. Kumar announced that consequently James would be re-released in theaters with the new voice on 22 April 2022.
The film was released on SonyLIV on 14 April 2022 in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi and the satellite rights of the Kannada version were sold to Star Suvarna.
It became a blockbuster at the box office and broke the record for the biggest opening day collections for any Kannada film by grossing around ₹28 crore to ₹32 crore on the first day. On the 4th day of its release, it also recorded the highest single day footfalls for a Kannada movie.
The film grossed ₹100 crores within 4 days of release and became the second highest-grossing Kannada film at the time of release whilst also becoming the fastest Kannada film to gross ₹100 crores at the box office at that time only to be surpassed by K.G.F: Chapter 2 in less than a month. It was also the second Kannada film to gross ₹100 crores in Karnataka.