Asian Window

From Wired:

With Hollywood hitting up comic books for blockbusters, a new comics publisher is looking to India for ideas. “The world is increasingly realizing that India is a source for creativity and great ideas, not just a back office to execute them more cheaply,” said Gotham Chopra, part of the management team at Los Angeles-based Liquid Comics.

One of the first projects for the publisher will be bringing its Ramayan 3392 AD (pictured) – a colorful, 21st-century re-imagining of Indian literary epic the Ramayana – to movie theaters. Liquid has teamed up with Mandalay Pictures and 300 producer Mark Canton for the film, which has a planned release date of 2011.

Chopra talked with Wired.com about Liquid’s birth, a new wave of Indian comics artists and the challenge of bringing an ancient Sanskrit epic to the silver screen.

Wired.com: Condensing the Ramayana into a comic book must have been hard, but condensing it into a film seems harder. What do you think about the challenge, and how do you think it will do with audiences unfamiliar with the venerable narrative’s mythology?

Gotham Chopra: Can you say, “Trilogy?” Seriously, this is something we’ve talked about at length even in relation to the original comic series. Obviously, our goal is to create a narrative structure that doesn’t require a familiarity with the original story. That’s an important note, not only so that people who have never heard of Ramayan can enjoy it, but also so those who are familiar with it are not offended by the film.

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