The countdown has begun.
Kochadaiiyaan, India’s first motion-capture, photo-realistic 3D animated film starring the legendary Tamil actor Rajinikanth, is out on May 9, releasing in around 6,000 screens in 10 countries.
Made in Tamil, Kochadaiiyaan has been dubbed in five Indian languages — Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Punjabi — and in foreign languages including Spanish and Japanese.
Directed by Rajinikanth’s younger daughter, Soundarya Rajinikanth Ashwin, Kochadaiiyaan has been in the making for the past two years.
Touted as a film of musical adventure with larger-than-life battle sequences, intricate period detail and real actors modelled in the animated world of historical India, Kochadaiiyaan has been made with the same performance capturing technology used in Hollywood film such as Avatar and The Adventures of Tintin.
While these Hollywood films took five years to make, Kochadaiiyaan was completed in two.
The budget for this film was Rs1.25 billion (Dh76 million) — way below Avatar’s Rs30 billion. It is a first not only in Indian cinema but one that launches Soundarya as a director.
But she knows that a majority of viewers will watch it only because it stars Rajinikanth.
“There’s no doubt about it that people will come to watch my father’s performance. That’s hundred per cent true. But I think anything new requires something that pulls you towards it and as far as Kochadaiiyaan is concerned, it is not just the new technology that attracts you first, but the fact that it is a Rajinikanth film in a new technology.
“Dad is shouldering the film totally, and I need to thank him for bringing this technology to the country,” she added.
In motion-capture technology, the performance of the actors is captured and a virtual image of the character is created.
Rajinikanth has said that he hardly knows anything about technology. So how did his daughter convince the 63-year-old to be part of such a project?
“This was during the time when my father was recovering from his illness. We didn’t want him to go through any physical strain, and the advantage of this technology is that it’s less physical strain on the actors. But it’s a lot of traumatic mental strain on the animators at a later stage because once the actors finish the job, we [animators and technicians] go into the studios and then create the real thing.
“Everything you see in Kochadaiiyaan is created. So when I approached him with the concept, he believed in the story and he believed that this technology could do justice to the story. Also, he believed I could pull it off. That’s why he agreed.”
Produced by Eros International and Mediaone Global Entertainment, the film is a historical saga about a Pandyan ruler, Kochadaiiyaan, the King of Kotaipattinam. Rajinikanth not only plays Kochadaiiyaan but also his two sons, Sena and Rana.
Rana, a fierce and ruthless warrior, returns to his native land to avenge the death of his father. Deepika Padukone plays the leading lady and the supporting cast includes an ensemble of stars from across India — Bollywood’s Jackie Shroff, Tamil actors Nasser and Sarath Kumar, Telegu actor Aadhi, Malayalam actress Shobana and Tamil actress Rukmini.
After his stint in Kochadaiiyaan, it seems Rajini has embraced technology. A case in point is his presence on social networking site Twitter, which has had an overwhelming response from fans.
Soundarya believes that the fact that a film like Kochadaiiyaan is releasing in the country is a mark of the growth that Indian cinema has witnessed over its 100 years of existence.
“We have gone from black and white, to colour to stereoscopic, and now Indian cinema has moved to performance capture. We are moving ahead and that is good,” said the 29-year-old.
— With inputs from IANS
