Disney & Yash Raj Films announce CG Film Roadside Romeo

[disneyboy20022]

....The features will be made with the specific focus of catering to Indian audiences' tastes. The first animated feature that is being worked on is Roadside Romeo, written and directed by Jugal Hansraj, and lead voice cast including Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Javed Jaffrey. Slated for a Summer 2008 release, the Animation production for the feature is being done at Tata Elxsi, VCL....

For the full article please click the link below....

http://us.animationxpress.com/anex/y2k7 ... ex1983.htm

Talk about speedy.. Summer 2008? I think the front page needs updating....

[Dottie]

Interesting!! Some of the YashRaj films are actually pretty good, and I think India with its love for bright colors, music, rich settings is the right country for a animated movie. I like the idea ad hope it'll not only be released in India.

[PeterPanfan]

Thought I'd bump this since cover art has been released.



Disney is really starting to like Dog films.

[UmbrellaFish]

And people said Bolt looked bad.

[blackcauldron85]

I read on (I thought) Animated News a few months ago that Disney and a Chinese animation studio were parnering to make a film (but I can't find that link anywhere). And now Disney and this Indian animation studio have partnered up. I wonder how much involvement Disney has in these films. It seems odd to have Disney work on films that won't get worldwide distribution. Even "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros", which were goodwill films so the U.S. and Latin America would have better relations, were shown around the world.

Is Disney not putting much money or resources into these films? Even films like "Valiant" and "The Wild" were released internationally...

[Harbinger]

The trailer for those who haven't seen it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzz6VM5lA2s

[Timon/Pumbaa fan]

At first, I thought this was the troubled "Gnomeo and Juliet" finally coming(last I heard, it was being made by Mirmax), but that I believe was going to be a telling of Romeo and Juliet with garden gnomes while this appears to be an original idea Disney's never has come close to trying before... a film about a dog.

Another way of saying 'what is this?'

[blackcauldron85]

Thanks for posting the link, Harbinger! There is a little blurb that the poster of that video wrote about the plot, which is good, since you can't tell at all by the trailer. It seemed like the trailer was in English (although it was hard for me to understand it)- why, if the film is made for an Indian audience, would it be in English?

The article that disneyboy20022 posted does mention that this film (and the other Disney/Yash Raj films) are catering to "Indian sensibilities", so maybe that's why the film may not look so appeal to us...?

[supertalies]

No, it's hindi (in india they sometimes speak english)
The trailer parodies (grammar?) some very famous Bollywood (indian) Movies.

[Balto123]

And it appears we now have our first proper look at what we can expect from "Roadside Romeo" courtesy of Wikipedia-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Romeocl0.jpg

[Dottie]

Interesting. Thanks for the link to the trailer. I think I actually figured out one of the movies they're parodying (sp?), but I am not sure since I don't speak Hindi.
But the movie might be better than it seems. Yash Raj Productions is not really an animation studio, but most of their movies are great. Still you need to be a little into Indian cinema to like them.
I would have liked to see the character Kareena Kapoor is voicing, since her voice is very special.

[JaceDisney91]

Well, it's a very interesting new approach from both Disney and Yash Raj Films to introduce these sort of movies to this type of audience. Suprised with the trailer though, the animation is actually very, very good, as in a lot better than I expected for a movie of this calibre and they seemed to have picked a perticularily great Bollywood actor for the title role.

Well whatever happens, I'd be interested to see how the movie turns out. Though I think it'll be wildly successful in the UK too as we have a strong Indian (Asian) community and we have a handful of Bollywood movies coming to cinemas virtually every week so I don't see why they can't release the movie over here too. This movie still looks very interesting and finally, a movie trailer for a CG-animated movie that did not use any low-brow fart jokes or the like! That's one thing I really like about this already!

[akhenaten]

on a related note..altho this should be in international dvd section....the magic gourd is out on video in south east asia..i saw VCDS of it but not dvds yet..maybe in a week or so.

[Paka]

Well, Roadside Romeo's Diwali release is almost here - about a week and a half actually, on October 24. There's a ton of stuff to sift through at the official website, including trailers, promos, character bios, a substantial photo gallery, etc.

Despite it being a rather generic story, the film's piqued my interest because of its Disney/Bollywood fusion. The animation seems to rely a wee bit too heavily on motion capture, but it still is an intriguing project nonetheless. The music is admittedly kind of catchy, especially "Chhoo Le Na." I wonder whether it will get a U.S. release at all - either theatrically or on disc. You think Disney will assume it won't have enough "market appeal" to be distributed in ye olde U. S. of A.?

[yukitora]

I read on (I thought) Animated News a few months ago that Disney and a Chinese animation studio were parnering to make a film (but I can't find that link anywhere). And now Disney and this Indian animation studio have partnered up. I wonder how much involvement Disney has in these films. It seems odd to have Disney work on films that won't get worldwide distribution. Even "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros", which were goodwill films so the U.S. and Latin America would have better relations, were shown around the world.

Is Disney not putting much money or resources into these films? Even films like "Valiant" and "The Wild" were released internationally...

The Chinese film is CJ7 and received an international DVD release. Releasing that film to cinemas would probably not be that profitable, so DVD release is fine imo.

[blackcauldron85]

There are 2 Roadside Romeo threads, so I wasn't sure which one to put this in, but I chose this one...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumb ... 920735.cms
(via animationguildblog.blogspot.com)

The article is about how Indian animation isn't doing so well. It mentions Roadside Romeo.

[akhenaten]

if anyone's interested in the future of india animation...watch this..

its disneyer than anything disney has churned in the past decade!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-EezcpFzVI

i hope disney will grab it for international or US release.

[Neal]

Wow! That actually looks really good! A prince film - something Disney hasn't really done.

And it's in traditional animation! YAY! Not enough of that these days except from Japan.

This looks much better than Roadside Romeo which looks bad to me.

I hope Disney does pick this up. We should email them, make them aware of it!

[akhenaten]

hopefully the story is as good as the animation. yes..lets make disney aware of it! but usually UTV distributes their own film in america..and release their dvds non-anamorphic

[Will Barks]

And it's in traditional animation! YAY! Not enough of that these days except from Japan.

I just saw the trailer and noticed the movie is NOT traditionally animated but in CGI rendered flat to look like 2D. Additionally, the animation is quite stiff, not comperable to 2D DACs.