In spite of this incentive, look for investment to come from television series co-producers like Digital Content Development Corp. (DCDC), whose success with Butt-Ugly Martians led to US$10 million DragonBlade, Hong Kong’s first CGI feature. Imagi International Holdings, the studio DreamWorks picked to do Father of the Pride, is in development on another CGI feature, reportedly for more than US$20 million. The company was born out of the sale of Boto International, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of artificial Christmas trees! In 2002, Boto sold off most of its manufacturing operations to an entity held by the Carlyle Group, an American private-equity firm, for US$136 million. Imagi also has another feature in the works for Japanese toymaker Bandai.

Watch for the much-anticipated Thru the Moebius Strip, too, from Global Digital Creations (GDC) and Monkey King from Jade Dynasty Publications and Shanghai Media Group.

India
While Mumbai’s Bollywood in the north produces approximately 1,000 live-action films annually (and Bangalore’s IT industry in the south has become a magnet for U.S. investment), the Indian animation industry, properly speaking, is relatively new in spite of the existing 70-odd Indian animation studios. Indian venture capitalists, however, who currently invest about US$20 million per year into the half billion dollar animation industry, are looking to double that amount by next year as expectations rise. Industry growth is estimated to increase fourfold over the next three years to US$2 billion.

Imagi International Holdings, which produced Father of the Pride for DreamWorks, is in development on two features: a $20 million+ CGI feature and a film for Japanese toymaker Bandai. © DreamWorks.

One of the Oscar qualifiers for best animated feature film, 2D/3D The Legend of Buddha, says a lot about the financing, evolution and the future of the Indian feature animation industry. Blazeway, a U.S.-based company specializing “in the business of content distribution and marketing across various media including but not limited to Internet, theater, television & digital media” and “of providing technology services to various clients for deployments of products over the internet” is the marketing partner for Pentamedia and handles the entire marketing and operations of Numtv.com (www.numtv.com) in the U.S.

Numtv.com is one of the world’s largest web casting portals, currently offering 13 live Indian TV channels, more than 200 films, radio, stage and print for Indians scattered around the world. Numtv.com is part of Chennai-based Pentamedia Graphics Ltd., whose principal activity is developing computer software for multimedia and webcasting services. This software is used to create animation and special effects for theatre, home video, television and PC. It also develops interactive CD titles, computer-based tutorials and corporate presentations. Pentamedia has operations in the U.S., Singapore, Mauritius, Malaysia and the Philippines with an annual turnover of around US$90 million.

Its clients have included Warner Bros., DreamWorks, TLC Entertainment and CBS. PMG has been ranked number three globally behind Disney and Pixar on the “PTI” (people, technology, infrastructure) index produced by the Robi Roncarelli report, a well-known industry journal. Pentamedia’s previous animation movies include Son of Alladin and Sinbad — Beyond the Veil of Mists, Pandavas — The Five Warriors and Alibaba and the 40 Thieves. Son of Alladin and Alibaba were also Oscar-qualifiers. It bought a company called Animasia International in Singapore (and its Philippines subsidiary Kingdom Animasia) in 1999, where the $6.3 million The Legend of Buddha was entirely animated, co-produced with the Singapore Economic Development Board. In March of 2000, Digital Domain announced that it had “negotiated a $5 million films production deal with Pentamedia, an Indian software powerhouse, to further develop new projects.”

Real investment is liable to come from the TV stations, too, where more people are in front of their TV sets every night than there are people in the United States. Zee Television, the largest media company in India with 20 channels and 60 million viewers, also produces animated series and films through Padmalaya Telefilms and animation facility Zee Institute of Creative Arts (ZICA), a training institute specializing in animation. India’s first mixed 2D/live action feature film, called The Queen of Fortunes, was created by ZICA.

Doordarshan, a public broadcaster, operates 23 channels reaching more than 89% of India’s billion-plus population or 890 million people. (If every viewer contributed one Lincoln penny, that would be US$8.9 million!) Mumbai’s UTV recently announced a US$25 million film fund, Film Fund India Ltd., and the creation of an international film distribution network with offices in London, Toronto and Los Angeles. UTV Toons, a subsidiary, is the largest animation company in India with over 700 artists.