Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar’s latest film Ninnindale opened last week to a tremendous response, grossing more than Rs 5 crore at the box-office. This included the Rs 2 crore on the first day of release – a first for a Kannada film.

Ninnindale was released in 191 theatres across Karnataka and is all set to be released in international markets, in the UAE, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Germany, in February.

Puneet’s last film was Yaare Koogadali that released more than a year ago. Since then he has been busy with the popular game show Kannadada Kotiyadhipati.

Ninnindale (Because of you) is the first film in Kannada of the well-known Telugu director Jayanth C Paranji. Another first for the film is that almost all the outdoor filming was done in the US.

In this quick interview, Puneeth Rajkumar talks about his one-year absence from the screen and his experience shooting for Ninnindale.

I have no idea why there was no release of my films last year. I was busy with the game show. This film (Ninnindale) was supposed to start in April and be released by September. Due to some changes in the script, it got postponed.

I had started working in Maithri by the time everything fell in place at the scripting level for Ninnindale.