When city-based technology company PixelKraft Studios announced recently that they would be adapting the late writer ‘Sujatha’ Rangarajan’s highly popular science fiction works ‘En Iniya Iyanthira’ and ‘Meendum Jeeno’ into full-length feature films, many wondered how they would look.
Siddharth S. Kumar, creative head at PixelKraft Studios, says that the film will be made using ‘Virtual production and motion capture techniques’. “It will feature live actors but the visual atmospherics inside the film will be generated using computers. They would look like the Hollywood films, ‘300’ or ‘Sin City’.”
The challenge, says Sidharth, will be to present Jeeno, the all-knowing dog that plays a role in both the novels. “Despite the fact that it is set in the 2020s, the novel, while imagining hovercrafts, features a very rudimentary form of the internet. Since we live in the age of Wikipedia, we are currently working on the script to incorporate the technological advancements of the last two decades. We are also toying with the idea of getting a prominent celebrity to lend the voice for Jeeno,” he says.
But why did PixelKraft choose the science fiction novels of Sujatha? “When I was in college, there were few novels that were widely read by all classes of people. ‘En Iniya Iyanthira’ was one of them. We couldn’t find a cost-effective way to make the film and had to wait for a long time for production costs to come down,” he says.
The company recently acquired the rights to produce the film from Sujatha’s family for an undisclosed amount. The films would be produced at a budget of approximately Rs. 40 crore.
