Despite having a successful career, Pawan Kumar has mentioned in several interviews before that he had a tough time finding producers for his films in the Kannada industry. After multiple rejections, he resorted to crowdfunding for his breakthrough film Lucia, a process that worked in his favour. He tried to do it again, unfortunately without success, with a script called C10H14N2, which eventually shaped into Dhoomam. While Dhoomam is produced by Hombale Films, a production house based out of Karnataka, it is primarily a Malayalam film.
“Cinema is a very business-oriented and a very expensive art form,” he says while opening up about the decision to make Dhoomam in a non-native language, “If there is no confidence in recovering the cost and making a profit, then it does not make sense to invest in it. Making a film with this concept with a bankable Kannada star does not make sense to the fanbase that they cater to. If I make it with a newcomer, then I will receive a lesser budget and hence, I will have to compromise on the vision. So, this script was stuck in this loop for a long time. Once I realised this peril, I started looking at other industries which had a bigger market and started pitching it. Otherwise, my primary choice would be to make it in the language that is native and comfortable to me.”
