Hanuman

It is a true saying that 'Animation when done right is Magic!' The medium of animation, especially in the feature format has the potential to charm audiences and endear itself to a viewer like few other media. Sahara Percept has that kind of a charming, endearing movie in the Silvertoons created, VG Samant directed Hanuman which releases sometime around Dussera.

Speaking to Animation 'xpress Sahara Motion Pictures COO Sandeep Bhargava stated ,"We are treating the 2D animated feature Hanuman as a mainstream release and will be giving it a full push on our part. We hope that the movie will be appreciated"

"For Hanuman, we have a slew of marketing innovations and ground activities planned across the country. We also plan to develop and market merchandise around the movie" he added.

Be it his super powers, or be it the religious angle, the Indian culture and values or be it the character's antics as a child, Hanuman is a very appealing subject and connects to the Indian audience on many levels. This makes Hanuman a golden opportunity for Indian animation in the sense that the movie can serve as an excellent vehicle for exposing the Indian masses to the multi artistic medium of animation.

The promotional and marketing activity done in the next 2 months is going to be very crucial in deciding just how much of a pull and awareness the film is going to have. Equally interesting would be observing the way Sahara-Percept positions the film and the release strategy it employs.

Sahara-Percept here's your chance to push Indian animation into the mainstream.

About the movie (Director's cut)
According to Samant, the actual time taken for production of Hanuman was 26 months. But since the studio was also involved in many international assignments which had delivery deadlines, the 26 months of production work were spread across 7 years!

Initially when Hanuman was conceptualised at Silvertoons, Samant was heading the entire animation operations there and was named director for Hanuman. The task of writing the movie was originally given to Bhrung Tutkari who was a panel member on the research team for B R Chopra's Mahabharat. Tutkari who was ageing and old at that time passed away just as he had begun working on the story.

Samant who was directing the movie took on additional responsibility in terms of research and writing the movie. "While writing Hanuman I had to be very careful not to offend any sensibilities. I researched on Hanuman for more than 3 months (Tulsi Ramayana, Ram Charita Manas, Hanuman Ank, Bhavartha Ramayan, Gayatri and other Tamil and regional literature) before I began writing" remarked Samant.

A veteran in animation, prior to Silvertoons, Samant headed the animation division at Films Division where he had made over 120 animated shorts having won several national and international awards.He had taken voluntary retirement to do something more challenging in the field of animation other than animated documentary or short films.

"Hanuman",claimed Samant "is the first fully animated feature that has been completely produced from start to finish on Indian soil. The subject, storyline and the theme is purely Indian. The film is directed keeping an Indian audience in mind and the culture, values and morals have all been carefully retained even as we have made an entertaining and charming movie"

"When it came to production we ensured that we did justice to every character.The character designs are based on the mythological theme and have been made keeping Indian audiences in mind" commented Samant.

160 artists were involved in this feature of which around 40 were digital artists all trained by him. A total of 200,000 drawings have been used in the movie which has 2870 scenes. The ensemble consists of 40 characters with more than 20 colors being used for each character. The movie has 1750 backgrounds painted with 22 bg artists on the team.

The final cut of Hanuman which has been dubbed in both Hindi and English is about 100 minutes.

A Sahara One Motion Pictures creation and a percept picture company production in association with Silvertoons, Hanuman is researched written and directed by VG Samant, Music is by Tapas Relia while Shaktimaan, Bhishma Pitamaha fame Mukesh Khanna plays the grown up Hanuman (voice).

- Anand Gurnani



Hanuman Art Work

Little Hanuman

Hanuman Action

Backgrounds