If the giant mechanical snake and the heavily armed android don’t catch your eye in the trailer for the Bollywood-style sci-fi film Endhiran: The Robot, the elaborate song-and-dance numbers surely will.
Mashing together a surreal mix of CGI robots, outrageous action and cornball choreography, the clip — which proclaims the film “the biggest spectacle ever” — racked up millions of views on YouTube. It also caught the eye of the genre freaks who run the legendary Alamo Drafthouse theater chain out of Austin, Texas.
In what might be the first theatrical deal cut solely on the strength of a viral video, they made a snap decision and snagged the rights to screen Endhiran in Austin, sight unseen.
“When the YouTube clip started spreading, people forwarded me the trailer and said, ‘Oh my god, you of all people need to see this!’” Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League told Wired.com in a telephone interview. “Since we were all dying to see the movie, we assumed there’s more people like us who saw the clip and whose appetites were whetted.”
While Hollywood still serves as the alpha nerve-center for globally consumable sci-fi movies, India stands poised to become the next hot spot. The world’s second most populous nation already cranks out reams of CGI content, both for domestic consumption and American studios. Increasingly, India’s visual-effects know-how and Bollywood’s unique cinematic style are combining to help sate the world’s thirst for sci-fi spectacle.
Indian moviegoers raised on Bollywood musicals have no problem suspending disbelief. Spectacle sells, whether it’s over-the-top soap opera or science fiction. Spider-Man rules as one of the country’s highest-grossing film franchises, while kid-friendly dancing alien movie Koi… Mil Gaya topped India’s box office in 2003 and spawned an equally popular 2006 sequel, Krrish.
Meanwhile, a new crop of Mumbai-bred pictures aims to attract international sci-fi fans with Hindi-flavored takes on aliens, robots and futuristic hellscapes:
• Ra.One: Bollywood star and producer Shahrukh Khan makes explicit moves toward a transcultural strain of sci-fi with this movie, whose title stands for “random access — version 1.” Filmed in London and India, the movie features soundtrack contributions by hip-hop artist Akon.
• Joker: Filmed in 3-D and starring Akshay Kumar, the movie tells the story of an alien landing in the desert within earshot of a NASA operations center.
• Paani: Director Shekhar Kapur, previously known for visually spectacular period dramas, heads into the future with this post-apocalyptic film slated for a 2012 release.
• Untitled UFO project: Director Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan teams with Hollywood visual effects expert John Palmer (Apollo 13, The Day After Tomorrow) on a movie slated to be filmed in part at NASA headquarters.
“India was never known for special-effects movies, but things are changing because the country now has so many effects houses doing work for Western filmmakers,” says Gitish Pandya, who tracks the Indian movie industry and runs Box Office Guru. “We’re going to be seeing more Indian sci-fi because the technology and staffing is there.”
World Domination?
Steeped in the craft of Hollywood blockbusters, it’s only natural that digitally savvy Indian filmmakers would start coming up with stories of their own. The big question: Can a generation of homegrown Indian tech-artisans crack the code for making globally appealing sci-fi?
Tamil-language Endhiran, filmed in Chennai, India, and dubbed in Hindi (as Robot) and Telugu (as Robo), will make its English-subtitled debut Friday at the Alamo. The movie tells the story of Chitti, an android who sings, dances, fights, memorizes entire telephone directories and falls in love after getting an emotional-implant upgrade. The film also stands as a shining example of Bollywood’s growing infatuation with sci-fi.
Filmed on an estimated budget of $38 million that makes it India’s most costly movie ever, Endhiran masterfully tapped the sci-fi market to become India’s top-grossing film of 2010. It also drew enthusiastic crowds when it played North America’s Bollywood movie circuit last fall.
“Theaters in the U.S. were charging as much as $30 per ticket and selling out shows,” said Pandya. “The consumer base is there to support sci-fi films locally made in India.”
Bolstered by the presence of Bollywood star Rajinikanth and Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), Endhiran’s filmmakers, including director S. Shankar, are now setting their sights on the rest of the world.
“This film became such a big phenomenon in India that we’ve been test-marketing here in the U.S.,” Endiran executive producer Jack Rajasekar said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “Hollywood studios are also very interested in what we’re doing.”
Worldwide reception to Bollywood sci-fi will likely depend on how cleverly filmmakers meld Eastern and Western influences to create a transcultural entertainment product that speaks the international language of mind-blowing spectacle.
For Endiran, Rajasekar, producer Kalanidhi Maran and their team imported Hollywood expertise to visualize the “swarm intelligence” that activates the movie’s armies of animatronic bots. Mary Vogt(Men in Black, Batman Returns) designed the costumes while Legacy Effects’ technical wizard Vance Hartwell (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, War of the Worlds) moved from Los Angeles to India for two years to work on the film’s animatronics.
“We’ve seen movies about artificial intelligence before, but by dramatizing this in the form of swarm intelligence, it puts us way ahead,” Rajasekar said. “Endhiran: The Robot has created a kind of reference and standard both in production and visual effects for Indian sci-fi in the way that it uses animatronics.”
India’s prospects as a 21st-century sci-fi incubator draw strength from an increasingly globalized digital production pipeline. For budget-conscious Hollywood studios, cost-per-shot considerations increasingly trump geographic convenience as South Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, New Zealand, India and Vancouver, Canada, play the “we can do it for less” card.
American filmmakers are feeling the pinch: A half-dozen California visual effects shops have shut down in the past three years, reports the Los Angeles Times.
U.S. outfits including Industrial Light & Magic and Rhythm & Hues routinely farm out VFX tasks to overseas vendors. Digital Domain, for example, subcontracted some Tron: Legacy effects to India. Meanwhile, Indian VFX houses including Tata Elxsi’s Visual Computing Labs (Terminator Salvation,Spider-Man 3), Reliance (Avatar) and Prime Focus (Clash of the Titans) have opened outposts in Los Angeles for closer proximity to the decision-making action.
Whether or not Bollywood’s new strain of sci-fi cinema hits home with English-speaking audiences, League said films like Endhiran offer a fresh twist on familiar formulas.
“It’s always fascinating to see classic genre nerd influences meshed with a completely foreign sensibility.
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