Coming next year, Hanuman-II

Riding high on the success of last year's animation film Hanuman, the makers have decided to make a sequel.

Hanuman-II will be made at a cost of Rs 90 million, the Percept Picture Company has announced. It will be jointly produced by Toonz Animation, a Thiruvananthapuram-based company who have done outsourced work for Hollywood animation films.

"The story of the film would be Hanuman coming in age of Kalyug. He will interact with kids in the modern world and finish off evil in society," said Mahesh Ramanathan, chief operating officer, Percept Picture Company.

Hanuman is good fun

The sequel of the film will release by Diwali 2007. 

Hanuman -- the first animation film written, produced, created and directed by an all-Indian team, did business worth over Rs 150 million last year.

It even outdid Sanjay Dutt's multi starrer Shaadi No 1 as well as the Salman Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer Kyon Ki. 

"When I made the first part of the film, it was difficult for me to get any corporation to put in money and faith in my project," said V G Samant, director of Hanuman and creative director for Hanuman-II. "I thank Percept group for investing faith in the film and we hope Lord Hanuman will give us his blessings for the sequel to be a success at box office. We have to have much better things to offer to the public in the sequel and we will try our level best to achieve our goal," he added. 

"We have done our homework well for the sequel. India has 35 crore (350 million) people under the age of 15 and that is a huge market. We feel our film will surely appeal to this age group," said Ramanathan.

The lead voiceover artiste for the film will be actor Mukesh Khanna, known for his roles in the television serials Shaktiman
and Mahabharat.

"Animation films need huge investments. If one has to make a half-an-hour film then it can cost around Rs 50,00,000 and that is too much money. So we had to wait for the right kind of project to start on our own," said Jaya Kumar, chief operating officer, Toonz Animation, in reply to a question about why the company did not venture on its own in the animation film business.

The company's client list includes some of the biggest names in media and entertainment: Marvel, Hallmark, Paramount and
Cartoon Network.

"In 1999, when we started animation business in India, our skills were not that high. But now we are fully equipped to meet the challenges," Kumar added.