PixelKraft Studios secures movie rights for Sujatha Rangarajan's stories

CHENNAI: Whether a virtual-Rajinikanth's motion-captured Kochadaiyaan made the cut or not, it has set the technology wheels of Tamil cinema in motion. As a double treat for the Tamil audience, the extremely popular late Tamil writer Sujatha Rangarajan's stories are to be re-created into hi-tech full-length feature films. This deal has been struck by Chennai-based PixelKraft Studios.
PixelKraft has secured the movie rights for En Iniya Iyanthira and Meendum Jeeno the sci-fi novels of writer Sujatha Rangarajan. The movie will be the first Tamil film to be made using virtual production similar to Sin City and 300, which were based on comic series. "We will first make En Iniya Iyanthira and then we will start working on Meendum Jeeno. It’s almost 20 years and both these books are still selling in the market and that's why we chose these works to be made into a movie. We are reviving a tradition that already existed," Siddharth S Kumar, director of PixelKraft told ET. "Sujatha’s works are all on science and technology and this is the kind of movies that the Tamil film industry has never experimented and there is a huge market untapped here," he added.

Sujatha Rangarajan who passed away in 2008 has authored over 100 novels, 250 short stories, ten books on science, ten stage plays, and has written poems. He has also extensively worked with the Tamil film industry.

En Iniya Iyanthira is scheduled for release in 2016 and would involve budget of Rs 40 crore. Around 150 technicians will work on this film. "It would take at least 18 months to make this film. You will have real actors and actress but you will see virtual scenes, virtual properties. This would cut down costs," said Siddharth.

The movie will be made at PixelKraft's studio, Chennai and some complex parts will be made at UK-based Centroid Motion Capture, a motion capture technology firm that has worked on films like Rajinikanth-starrer Kochadaiyaan and Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man 2.

Centroid recently tied up with PixelKraft to launch Centroid India. "We will outsource 30 per cent of the work to Centroid and 70 per cent will be done here. Or we will be bringing the team from UK here and we will work from Chennai itself," Siddharth pointed out.

A producer from the Tamil film industry, on condition of anonymity, said, "Sujatha’s works are brilliant and a movie out of it is a great idea. Both the scripts selected are ideal for a virtual production.

Also the industry has to experiment new genres of film going forward."