Hanuman Vs Mahiravana is an extra special feature film for Hyderabad-based Green Gold Animation and its founder Rajiv Chilaka. A chunk of this animation film, which is being distributed by Yash Raj Films and scheduled to release nationwide on July 6, unfolds in the dark. “It was challenging to work on an animation project where the story happens from sunset to sunrise, beneath the earth’s surface,” Chilaka, a co-producer of the film, tells us.
Hanuman Vs Mahiravana
Chilaka has been at the helm of the studio he established in 2001, and saw it through an uncertain phase in its initial years. The studio’s pivotal television show Chhota Bheem went on air on Pogo in 2008, and marked a swift turnaround. Chilaka and his team haven’t looked back since. He has an affinity towards projects that draw from the Indian epics, and reasons that a lot more can be done with stories of home-grown superheroes: “I felt that a lot of children in India do not easily relate to international animated characters. Why not give them Indian superheroes? It’s a decision we took in the initial stages of the studio. Creating our own characters was tougher to do than taking up animation service jobs for international studios but it has helped us carve an identity,” he explains.
Vittalacharya era
Hanuman Vs Mahiravana , written by Narayanan Vaidyanathan and directed by Ezhil Vendan, aims to attract the family audience as a whole and not just children. Ezhil Vendan, says Chilaka, has a more traditional approach to storytelling that stems from the fascination for southern films of yore, especially those made by B Vittalacharya. Chilaka hopes this film will hark back to those times where the screens brought alive stories of mythology and fantasy. “The crux of the story was culled out from mythological texts and we took cinematic liberties to develop certain portions,” he states.
The lighting and imagery for the underground portions were tricky, he concedes, and the team chose to do the storyboarding and filming on specially-erected sets in tandem and completed the project in two years. “We took a different approach from that of traditional animation films. From the way we narrate the story to character presentations, we hope it will appeal to a large section of Indian audience that doesn’t usually come to the theatres to watch an Indian animation film,” he says.
Hanuman Vs Mahiravana
Chilaka positions Hanuman Vs Mahiravana as an ‘untold story’ from the Ramayana, one which tracks events that unfolded on the penultimate day of the big battle as Hanuman locks horns with Mahiravana, the dark lord, and saves Rama and Lakshmana.
The film will release both in 2D and 3D in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil.
Netflix original series
There’s a lot more brewing at Green Gold Animation. In the works is Mighty Little Bheem , touted to be the first Indian original animation series for Netflix. “We will have 52 five-minute episodes, without dialogues, and will be targeting little children. Bheem is a toddler in the series,” says Chilaka.
Another spin-off of Chhota Bheem will be the animation project Kungfu Dhamaka , in which Bheem and friends travel to China to take part in Kungfu competition.
Two television projects Mighty Raju and Super Bheem are in the pipeline, apart from a series for Amazon Prime. An Indo-Argentine collaborative feature film Escape to India has also been mooted.
Chilaka intends to put forth further projects riding on Indian epics, and reasons, “There’s no dearth of stories that can come from our epics and we can present several superheroes.”
