Bengaluru: Two-year-old character entertainment startup, Graphic India, sends three projects to LA and helps a global production house and creator of superheroes Stan Lee come to Bollywood Indian gods and mythological heroes are making their debut in Hollywood with three of character entertainment startup Graphic India’s projects being developed into live-action or animated films, while the two-year old, 20-person company is also helping an eminent global production house enter Bollywood.
The projects being turned into films include The Leaves, a supernatural thriller involving Nadi astrologers; Ramayan 3392AD, a futuristic epic inspired by the futuristic epic inspired by the Ramayana; and The Sadhu, which will be co-created with Mark Canton, the with Mark Canton, the producer behind blockbuster 300.
Besides, Stan Lee – the mastermind behind SpiderMan, Hulk, Iron Man and X-Men, among others – is looking to turn Chakra the Invincible, a comic series he wrote in collaboration with Graphic India, into his first Bollywood film.
“I’ve always been a fan of Bollywood films and I’m really excited about launching Chakra the Invincible as my first Bollywood superhero movie,” said Lee. “We have already met with some of the most amazingly talented actors and directors in Indian cinema, and I have no doubt that they will help make the Chakra film a massive hit in India and around the globe.” and around the globe.”
The film is a reinvention of Superman as a Mumbai teenager named Raju Rai, who activates the chakras of his body to unleash supernatural powers – just one of the uniquely Indian creations by Graphic India, which has helped propel a slew of local cartoon characters onto the cartoon characters onto t global stage. Chakra the Invincible is now available on the Angry Birds game application, where it garnered over 25 million views within three months. An animated movie version was also premiered on Cartoon Network in India.
According to a report by According to a report by Research and Markets, the Research and Markets, the Indian animation industry was valued at $247 million last year and is forecast to grow at 15-20% per annum.
However, animation studios are only now starting to develop their own starting to develop t intellectual property based around their own creations as the industry has been heavily dependent on outsourced animation services. While Hollywood blockbusters such as Avatar drew heavy parallels with Indian mythology, they did so without adopting its original meaning.
“India, which has some of the greatest mythic stories the world has ever known, had not been part of this $100 billion character entertainment space that has been emerging,” said co-founder Sharad Devarajan, 39, who had previously founded Liquid Comics (formerly Virgin Comics) with Sir Richard Branson in 2006. “Characters like Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh, and Dragonball-Z were becoming household names all around the world, and names all around the world, and countries like Korea, China, and Japan had literally built billion-dollar industries around the character entertainment ecosystem,” added Devarajan.
Sonia Manchanda, founder of design consultancy Idiom, said, “India is a land of stories that were passed on since Neanderthal times – it is the most unbroken collective heritage we have. It is a good move to develop these stories by the people who had grown up with it, instead of superficially by storytellers from elsewhere.”
“Some of the best production houses and major digital distribution platforms in the world today are now seeing Indian stories as having all the elements for a global aving all the elements for a global worldwide audience, ” said Devarajan. “What we want to do is take the essence of Indian creativity and create creativity and create something that could appeal to the growing youth of India and that is also very aligned with global content.”
