New animation wave is turning heads & screens

The extraordinary success of the multilingual Mahavatar Narsimha shows the increasing acceptance and appetite for animated films among the Indian audience, say producers and industry observers.

Without much marketing, the animated film made on a budget of ₹15 crore has collected ₹114 crore in the past two weeks, competing at the box office with the Hindi blockbuster Saiyaara and formidable films from big Bollywood names such as Dharma Productions, Jio Studios and Ajay Devgn.

This is the first Indian animated film to collect more than ₹100 crore. As much as 73% of the film's collections came from the Hindi language version, indicating its pan-India acceptance.

"We always have had a huge market for animated films in India. This is reflected in the phenomenal success of animated films of Disney and Sony's Spider-Man Universe in India," said Vijay Kiragandur, founder of Hombale Films, the company which produced Mahavatar Narsimha. "But we feel Mahavatar has resonated with the audience also because of its content."

Hombale Films has now planned a Mahavatar Cinematic Universe in which it aims to produce several animated films between 2025 and 2037 based on the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu.

"India has a huge appetite for high-quality animated storytelling rooted in mythology. Audiences exposed to global animation content through streaming platforms are now ready to embrace animated films in theatres," said Suniel Wadhwa, cofounder and director, Karmic Films. Wadhwa will be distributing an animated film, titled Chronicles of Devi - Chapter 1: Mahishasura.

According to industry estimates, big streaming platforms invest 20-30% of their original content budget on animation. These estimates point out that India is the second-largest producer of animated content in the world. In fact, global anime (Japanese animation) brand Crunchyroll said recently that 60% of its estimated global growth would come from India.