End of '09 and Indian audiences will get bedazzled by 'Arjun', a glittering jewel from UTV's animated feature film treasure chest. 'As the titles suggests, the movie focuses on the Indian mythological warrior prince Arjun, one of the five Pandavas.

Produced by UTV and directed by Arnab Chaudhuri, work on Arjun began in March 2007 and the feature film is planned to release by end of 2009. In fact the process of production of the first scene is on presently, where the artists are enjoying the designing part. A team of more than 75 people are currently working on the project.

Arjun is a blend of CG and 2D as Arnab puts it, "The look of the film is 2D, but we're using a lot of CG getting there."

The storyline begins with Arjun as a nine year old boy and follows him till he grows into the warrior that the world knows him as. It explores his life with his brothers in Hastinapur, his training and education and his ultimate discovery of the warrior within himself.

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Speaking with AnimationXpress.com about the theme, Arnab Chaudhuri said, "It's a great action story rendered on a massive scale." He added, "We are not reinventing anything, we're retelling a mythological story that most people are familiar with but we're giving it a fresh visual interpretation. You could find action parallels with films like King Arthur, Braveheart or Gladiator but the look and flavour of the film are definitely very Indian."

"The research and development was quite tricky because nothing from the period really exists today. It is present in some scholarly research but our impressions of the period have been colored mostly by popular myth, hypothesis and speculation. It was both challenging and a lot of fun going back thousands of years and visualizing the costumes and architecture, the city planning and general lifestyles of people of the time. We're pitching our story on a very human level, it's an epic story with human characters with human feelings, so the ability to create and project a world that's believable is critical."

Aditya Krishna, who is the animation producer for UTV said, "We were looking to do something great and inspiring. After much deliberation, we thought of Arjun, the Indian hero, who was the first warrior hero. He was a very charming and popular warrior prince, young, dashing and a true hero. He has a lot of aspirational appeal as a character and his journey of finding himself is very relatable to a lot of us today."

"We approach our animation projects in a similar way to our live action movies – there is major emphasis on story, technical excellence, music, cast, production value… all of which help in creating a fine movie product that we will all be proud of," he added.

He further informs that the film has been given a stylized look. The pre production is on in full swing as is the simultaneous production of the first sequence of the film.

Arnab did not rule out the possibility of a sequel for Arjun once this project is done.

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