Company will invest Rs 80 crore in India-based content.
DQ Entertainment (International) Limited, a Hyderabad-based publicly-listed animation, game art and entertainment company, is in the process of making 3D stereoscopic animated movies, both for television and theatrical release, based on legendary Oscar-winning Bengali film director Satyajit Ray and Vande Mataram author Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novels.
“At this moment, we are developing Ray’s works ‘Unicorn’ and 'Mountain of Moon’ as 70-minute TV movies. After that, we want to produce ‘Raj Singh – A Love Story’, written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, as an 85-minute feature film with a mix of 3D stereoscopic animation and live action for global theatrical release. All these three movies are slated for release in 2013,” Tapaas Chakravarti, chairman and chief executive officer of DQE, told Business Standard.
Stating that the three movies would together require a budget of Rs 20 crore, Chakravarti said the company was investing an additional Rs 60 crore in developing India-based content across genres like mythology, historical and contemporary for global audience.
“We are tying up with the Al Jazeera Group in Doha and another group in Germany for an adaptation of ‘Panchatantra’. Story board for the euro 4-million (approximately Rs 24 crore), 52-episode project is being done in the US and it should go into production in two months and be delivered by the end of 2011. This apart, ‘Karthikeya’, a $300,000 television movie and ‘Bollywood Musical’ with an estimated budget of Rs 10 crore are in various stages of development, which are expected to be competed by 2013,” he added.
DQE is giving final touches to Ray’s ‘Detective Stories of Feluda’ in high-definition animation format for Walt Disney. The first movie (60-minute) in the series, entire adaptation and voices for which had been done in London, will be launched by Walt Disney for global television sometime next month.
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“If you see the division of the content that we are producing now, 2-3 per cent of our work is Indian. This is motivated by international channels like Turner Group, Pogo and Cartoon Network, who want India-based mythology and historical content to be converted into contemporary and modern-day life stories suitable for international markets. We don’t want to neglect the Indian market anymore. Hence, we are now betting big on India and 60 per cent of our new India-based content is for global markets. In five years from now, India-based content will be 6-7 times than what it is now,” Chakravarti said.
DQE's orderbook, which currently stands at Rs 650 crore, is to be executed in the next two years. The company reported a net profit of Rs 26 crore on revenues of Rs 175 crore in the last financial year.