Hollywood's search for new mythologies now extends to the Indian subcontinent.

[Guest guest]

The Standard

China's Business Newspaper

re-printed from the L.A. Times

 

Hollywood's search for new mythologies now extends to the

Indian subcontinent. One of the world's greatest stories, India's

Ramayana, is being retold as a post-apocalyptic comic book, in

Ramayana Reborn, with an animated television spinoff for kids

titled The Seven Sounds.

 

This is the brainchild of the newly launched Virgin Comics and

Virgin Animation, an entertainment partnership between

British billionaire Richard Branson, bestselling New Age

author Deepak Chopra, film director Shekhar Kapur (Bandit

Queen and Elizabeth) and India's leading licenser of comic

books, Gotham Entertainment Group, which has brought

Spider-Man and X-Men to Delhi and Mumbai, as well as

launched a new Indian version of Spider-Man.

 

" The Ramayan is the Eastern equivalent of the Odyssey. It is

our Lord of the Rings, says Gotham Chopra, Deepak's 30-year-

old son, a former TV personality, author and producer, and the

new venture's chief creative officer.

 

The new companies, based respectively in New York and

Bangalore, India, are using Asian-influenced comics as the

platform to build a global media company.

 

" We felt that interest in this Asian- edged content, this is the

growing wave, " says Chopra. " Richard, as a big Western

billionaire, recognized that the future of entertainment is in the

East, not necessarily in Hollywood. "

 

This is the first major foray for Branson's Virgin empire into

the world of comic books in 20 years, a thriving arena in the

United States, which has been the springboard for many

Hollywood blockbusters.

 

" The growth of the comic market in America has been

spectacular, " notes Adrian Sington, executive chairman of

Virgin Books, who is supervising the multi-million US dollar

investment for Virgin.

 

" It's been led by comics made in Asia. Despite the fact that

India has a mature entertainment business, with movies and

sports, it's had no comic business. They're leveraging the talent

of Indian creators and moving them like manga into the West.

We're looking to help them do that. "

 

According to news reports, comic books saw their sales jump 9

percent in the United States last year. Still, Marvel, one of the

industry's giants, made twice as much money licensing

superheroes to the movies than on the sale of comic books.

 

The comics business in the United States is a fraction of what it

is in some countries. According to Forbes, manga - a style of

Japanese comics - is a US$5.6 billion (HK$43.68 billion)

industry.

 

Virgin Comics is already in development on three separate

lines of comics: Maverick, based on the work of songwriters;'s Cut, working with film directors (John Woo has

signed on); and Shakti, which will focus on Indian content.

 

Shakti means " power " in Hindi, and titles in the line include

Devi, which means " goddess. " Chopra describes the character

as " Asia's first super woman. "

 

" She wears the different faces of the goddess, " he said. " On

one hand she plays the typical submissive Asian housewife, on

the other hand she's Angelina Jolie. " Another story line

concerns a 19th century English soldier who becomes a

disciple of a sadhu, who trains him to become a spiritual

warrior.

 

Sharad Devarajan, the new venture's chief executive, says the

plan is to publish comics in the United States, Japan and, of

course, in India, not a traditional comic powerhouse but where

there will be an estimated 550 million teenagers by the year

2015.

 

Deepak Chopra is very much involved, says his son.

 

" A lot of people, like my father and Shakur, they're tired of

India being relegated to being this backroom, this place for

outsourcing. They both felt that India has this incredible pool

of talent, and [wanted to], if they could, be part of the creative

renaissance. "

 

LOS ANGELES TIMES