VIRGIN COMICS: JV of Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapoor & Richard Branson

Here is an annoucement that was made by Gotham Chopra (son of the awesome Deepak Chopra) about their partnership with Shekhar Kapoor (Indian Movie Director – also directed “Elizabeth”) and Sir Rihcard Branson to create VIRGIN COMICS.

At long last, I get to unleash the news! Welcome to Virgin Comics!

Virgin comics in many ways started as Shekhar’s vision. Some people smirked when he used to say that not too far in the future, Spiderman would take off his mask and he’d be an Indian boy. Well last year that happened, when our initial partner – India’s largest publisher of comic books – in collaboration with Marvel Comics published a book called SPIDERMAN INDIA.

But soon we started to think – screw Spiderman. You think Lord of the Rings is cool?! We have Ramayana and Mahabharata and such a rich and dynamic mythology that has never been showcased to the world in a cool way. And here was this incredible pool of talented artists and writers assembled by a guy who quickly became my best friend and partner Sharad Devarajan (just google him!) that was already proving the fact that India could compete and surpass creative talent anywhere in the world. And I figured if we brought Shekhar and Heavy D into the picture – India’s two greatest creative impressarios (if I don’t say so myself), we could trigger a creative rennaissance.

And so we did – we formed a creative studio, the goal being to use comic books as a means to incubate and create stories, inspired by Shekhar and Deepak’s creative vision, and eventually turn them into movies, tv shows, video games, digital applications, etc – i.e to build the Pixar of India by mining the rich talent and enormous anthology of mythic content.

But then we realized that the opportunity was so huge that we needed to take advantage of it. And that required capital. So Sharad and I made a list and on top of that list was an English Billionaire that both Sharad and I admired greatly – but had never met – Sir Richard Branson, ya’know Virgin Airlines, Virgin Galactic, the Rebel Billionaire etc.

So I called his office and I let loose on some poor assistant our vision and she said “cool – Richard would like this.” And she told me to send her an email. And I did.

And the following day, he emailed me back!

And six months later (negotiating wasn’t easy) having been led through the Virgin landscape by our new best friend Adrian Sington, we formed Virgin Comics and Animation – understanding that not only had we got the capital we needed to build a premeire entertainment company OUT OF INDIA (based in Bangalore) but also to package it under one of the coolest, trendiest global brands that exists today – VIRGIN.

So that’s my story. We’re developing a bunch of content, the first wave of which will be available this coming summer including THE SADHU, RAMAYANA REBORN, SNAKE WOMAN, and SHEKHAR KAPUR’S DEVI.

The stuff is tight folks. The world is gonna love it. I’m psyched. Thanks to Shekhar, Deepak, and Sir Richard for daring to dream.

What do you think of this effort?

Technorati : Deepak Chopra, Richard Branson, Shekhar Kapoor, Virgin Atlantic