Green Gold Animation, well known for its Indian animated content is coming out with yet another theatrical for its Chhota Bheem franchise, this time called Chhota Bheem – Himalayan Adventure, in the summer of 2015.
The team of Chhota Bheem headed by Producer and Director Rajiv Chilaka went on a expedition to the Himalayan heights to have a feel of the location and what’s in the air as a precursor for the making of their new venture in which the iconic character would trek the highlands covered with adventure, hair-pin curves, snow-clad peaks, trees, valleys and steep roads.
“It was not just a joy ride, but a blend of pleasure and profession. The team was excited to start the journey at Manali, the foothills of Himalayas and the kids had enjoyed the journey most, which was exactly what the team expected as they were seeing in them the possible reactions and reflections of Chhota Bheem and other characters,” revealed Rajiv exclusively to AnimationXpress.com.
This is not the first time, the team made such a field visit. It had visited Bali, Indonesia before making Chhota Bheem and the Thorne of Bali which was the sixteenth movie in the Chhota Bheem series and the second to be released in theatres with collection of Rs 4.65 crore at the box office. Whereas Green Gold’s first theatrical release Chhota Bheem and the Curse of Damyaan (2012) was made at a budget of Rs 4 crore but managed to recover only Rs 3.3 crore.
“We have just started working on the movie. Right now 40 artists are currently involved in the pre-production; we will be getting around 100 more artists to help out soon. We finalised the script in September, which has been written by Teja Pratap. We have not locked the budget yet but we are planning to put in close to Rs 6 crore in this venture. We haven’t finalised the date of release yet but most probably will be doing it by end of May or beginning of June,” he added.
The team also had a firsthand experience of the local conditions and the forthcoming feature would undoubtedly carry uncanny resemblance to the snow clad peaks, instead of imaginary sequences and concocted notations.
While talking about his earlier Chhota Bheem movies which couldn’t set the cash registers ringing at the box office Rajiv expounded: “Animation industry in early 2000 was pretty bad for India, but now so many studios are working for Indian television shows. I feel Chhota Bheem did raise the standards for Indian animation. For movies it’s still a long way to go, but I am happy to see Chaar Sahibzaade is doing well, they have done a brilliant job and it’s only encouraging for our industry.”