Source: Press Release

An adventure fable sourced from the vast collection of stories from popular children’s magazine Chandamama would be seen on the big screen soon. The monthly has tied up with Thiruvanthapuram-based Toonz Animation Ltd to produce a full length animated feature film based on a story from the vast library of Chandamama on an estimated budget of a whopping Rs 200 million.

“We have entered into a deal with Chandamama where we will go through their entire library of over 15000 stories and select a suitable one to be made into an a 90-minute animated flick,” says Divas Sadasivan of Toonz Animation.

Legendary film-makers B Nagi Reddi and his friend Chakrapani had conceptualised Chandamama in early 1947 and the company had been publishing stories in print as well as electronic media in 14 languages. The library of Chandamama has over 15,000 exclusive stories.

L Subramanyan, CEO of Chandamama, said millions of Indians had grown up with Chandamama over the last 60 years. “The proposed animated film will help us reach out to the current and future generations of young people,” he said.

The move is part of the expansion plans of the children’s monthly which has already ventured online with its website and runs a 4 hour radio programme broadcasting legendary stories from the magazine every Sunday on a private FM station in Chennai. Soon the stories would be also made available on mobile phones too.

“Creative teams from both companies would work jointly and select one story most probably bearing towards adventure which would be then scripted for the movie”, J Subramanyam, CEO of Chandamama said while speaking to the press.

“The emphasis worldwide is on content that has local appeal. In animation most of the work has been on characters that are mythological. We wanted to do something different and since Chandamama is loved by children and adults alike we think this film would appeal to a wider audience and more people would be tempted to watch,” says Sadasivan.

Toonz, which has previously worked on fully animated films such as ‘Hanuman Returns’ and a 2D animated television series ‘The adventure of Tenali Raman’ says it now wants to move away from mythology