Child's pay

Filmmakers and studios seek a way into the family pocketbook through animated films.

Animesh Kariya, a 12-year-old Mumbai resident, dug into his pocket money to procure tickets to the 90-minute animation film, Roadside Romeo. His mother explains his excitement, “It is holiday time and he has been really eager to take us [his parents] out for a movie.” Kariya and some few million kids, long ignored by filmmakers, will soon have an array of animation movies to choose from — thanks to India’s software success story graduating to the creative space.

This also explains why filmmakers are falling all over themselves to market animation and digitised content to and through kids. Bollywood trade analysts estimate that leading Bollywood production houses are setting aside sums to the tune of Rs 20 crore per animation film.

For starters, Warner Bros (India) has ventured into the animation genre with an untitled film to be directed by Jyotin Goel. “The film is not based on the human kingdom but portrays the melodious world of birds and attempts to explore their lives from an unusual standpoint,” said Goel. South Indian actor Rajinikanth will be seen in a 3D animation film Sultan — The Warrior, made by his daughter.

Ace director Karan Johar is busy with Coochie Coochie Hota Hai, an animated remake of his debut hit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Well-known animator Simi Nallaseth is directing The Dream Blanket, based on a Tibetan fairy tale, for UTV Motion Pictures. Govind Nihalani is producing and directing an animated movie, Kamlu, the story of a baby camel’s adventures in Rajasthan. Most of these films are slated for release this year or early in 2009. Virgin Comics and Kahani World, an independent animation company based in Toronto, have teamed up to co-produce Secrets of the Seven Sounds, a full-length animated feature for kids aged seven and up, inspired by the Ramayana.

The logical reason why everyone wants to get into animation is its cost-effectiveness. A full-length animation movie is likely to cost around $15-25 million in India, compared to $100-125 million in a developed country like the UK or US. Industry experts believe that the Indian animation industry is likely to boom like the animation market in Japan, where adults watch animation movies more than they watch live action.

On cue is Sunil Doshi, producer of successful films like Bheja Fry and Mix Doubles, and CEO of Alliance Media & Entertainment. He acquired distribution rights worth $10 million for 11 Japanese animation films. The films include Nausicaa — The Valley of the Wind, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Whisper of the Heart, My Neighbor Totoro and the Academy award-winning Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, and will be distributed exclusively by Alliance in India under the label Junior.

Doshi notes, “With 350 million kids under the age group of 14 waiting to savour everything from Mickey, Minnie, Panda and Shrek, Bollywood studio heads feel animation has a promising future in India, provided they package it like their Hollywood counterparts do.”

Alliance Media also plans television syndication, home video distribution under the label of Junior, and product merchandising. With releases planned in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, Doshi intends to dub the films in local languages so as to make them more accessible to non-metro audiences as well. Besides Japanese content, the media company is also releasing for-kids content from Scandinavian and North American countries.

In spite of successful children’s films like Makdee, which grossed over Rs 70 lakh, and Hanuman, which mopped up Rs 3 crore, the industry prefers not to invest in films that feature children alone. Instead, they go for films that appeal to children as well as adults, like Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish, which earned Rs 18 crore and Rs 41 crore respectively. But cash registers have begun to ring. Mahesh Samat, managing director of Walt Disney India, which produced Roadside Romeo along with Yash Raj Films, maintains that the film is bound to be a success.

“We believe animation has a terrific future in India,” he exults. Hollywood names like Disney and Warner have finally woken up to the potential of India’s $2.1 billion film industry. Discussing his future plans, Samat cites, “We have currently four live-action films in the pipeline, which we are producing ourselves. Zokkomon is a film which will star Darsheel Safary, and the second is 19th Step, starring Kamal Haasan. We have also started working on our second animation script with Yash Raj Films.”

Jai Natrajan of Maya Entertainment in an earlier interview had said, “I expect that the upcoming big-budgeted films from Yash Raj, UTV, Percept and Adlabs will take animation films in India to the next level, and revive the animation market.” He called the Rajinikanth starrer Sultan — The Warrior a clever move.

“The southern superstar cannot do action films like he used to earlier. An animation film is the perfect answer to his old age, as it can retain his action movements.” If Disney has managed a coup getting Bollywood’s hot couple Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor to dub for them, Percept’s Shailendra Singh has roped in Akshay Kumar to dub for the elephant character Jumbo. Actors Lara Dutta and Paresh Rawal have also lent their voices to Percept’s December 2008 release.

The Indian Film Company has firmed up plans in collaboration with Richard Branson and Shekhar Kapoor’s Virgin Comics to make three horror animation movies. Pritish Nandy Communications and DQ Entertainment, an animation, game art and film-production company, will be co-developing and co-producing six movies in the next three or four years within a global budget of $45-50 million. Not just animation, exclusive merchandising is also on the cards.

Pritish Nandy states in a communiqué, “Our projects will be based on modern new age animation flicks, Indian mythology-based stories, some of which have already been conceived by PNC, as well as a remake of great Indian classics for today’s audiences in an exciting new format to breath new life into them. We are also exploring gaming extensions for all platforms to be co-developed with DQ Entertainment including comic book spin-offs.”

With high-quality small budget movies doing roaring business, it seems Bollywood is desperate and willing to tread paths less travelled.