Slumdog Millionaire - grossing $61,605,255 worldwide as of January 21st - has recently skyrocketed to the top of Hollywoods box office. With numerous nods from the academy for this years Oscars, it is projected to come out one of the top winners. Slumdog Millionaire, however, is not the only gem coming out of India this year.
With a growing animation and gaming industry which could touch $1.3 billion this year, India is fast becoming a large player on the entertainment scene. Now, a hit Bollywood thriller about a man with short-term amnesia has inspired India’s first 3D videogame.
The PC game, based on the Hindi-language film “Ghajini,” was launched in India this month and will be marketed worldwide as well. Which means we get to check out what India has to offer!
Ghajini, a box office smash last year in the world’s biggest film industry in terms of volume (that’s right, it’s not Hollywood), is loosely based on the 2000 Oscar-nominated Hollywood thriller Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan. Ok, so Hollywood DOES play a large role.
“There are no Indian games so we wanted to bring Indian games to the audiences here and we built India’s first 3D game,” said Sashi Reddy, head of FX labs, which developed the game.
“So this is based on one of the big Bollywood hits and the top hero in India.”
Aamir Khan, who stars in Ghajini, plays a businessman who suffers from short-term memory loss after a fight with the villains who kill his girlfriend. His revenge and struggle dealing with his handicap, forms the plot.
The gaming version is hoping to replicate the film’s success.
India once was known soley for outsourcing sweatshops that sketched, painted and digitized ordered content. Now, Indian animation and gaming firms are aiming high — claiming ownership of their products and sharing copyrights and profits.
The Indian market is expected to grow to about $1.3 billion this year from about $300 million in 2006, and employ about 30,000 animators alone, says the National Association of Software and Service Companies, the main industry lobby.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Bollywood” … Please take a moment to check out the video below. This is a classic Bollywood style music number.
How do you feel the emerging foreign game markets will fair against the current Japanese, Korean and American powerhouses?
January 25th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Nice video. I can’t wait till this movie gets here! My wife an i are extremely excited for it! By the way i love the video. I was grooving to it, and now i want to be in a bollywood film
January 26th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I KNOW! It’s fun, isn’t it!?