Ok, so was browsing through my bloglines feeds, and came across this entry in The Beat. Apparently, Shekhar Kapur ( yes, that guy), Deepak Chopra ( Yes, that guy), Sharad Devarajan (*glack choke*), John Woo ( *sigh*) aand Richard Branson are getting into comics.

British mogul Richard Branson is getting into the comicbook biz.

Branson
and his Virgin Books have teamed with scribe Deepak Chopra, filmmaker
Shekhar Kapur and Gotham Entertainment Group to launch Virgin Comics
and Virgin Animation.

Virgin Comics will have offices in New York City, while Virgin Animation will be based in Bangalore, India.

Shingles
will focus primarily on Asia as an area to inspire and create content
and drive revenue, though the operation intends to reach a global
audience. In addition to creating and publishing comics, the principals
plan to take their properties and characters and parlay them into
movies, animation, toys, videogames and consumer products.

The
principal architects behind the partnership and the formation of the
companies are Gotham Entertainment topper Sharad Devarajan and Chopra’s
son Gotham. The pair are spearheading the operations of Virgin Comics
and Virgin Animation, with Devarajan serving as CEO and Gotham Chopra
as chief creative officer. They have tapped Indian advertising exec
Suresh Seetharaman to serve as prexy of Indian operations.

Devarajan and Gotham Chopra told Daily Variety the
two companies will spend the next 12-18 months staffing the Indian
operation with approximately 150 people, most of them artists.

“For
Sharad and I, this has been our dream,” Chopra said. “And when we were
going over potential partners for this, Richard was somebody that was
at the top of our list, in our fantasy. It’s amazing that we have now
all come together.”

“We hope to create content that not only
reaches a global audience but also helps start a creative renaissance
in India,” said Devarajan, who will continue to operate his Gotham
Entertainment — South Asia’s largest comics publisher — as a separate
entity.

The first offering from Virgin is scheduled to debut
midyear from filmmaker John Woo. The helmer is creating an original
comic property under Virgin Comics’ Director’s Cut line, one of three
separate lines created for the company. The others are the
Indian-infused Shakti line and the Maverick line.

Woo and Gotham Chopra previously teamed on the MGM actioner “Bulletproof Monk,” which Woo directed and Chopra exec produced.

Partnership
gives Virgin its first stab at the comics and animation businesses and
also gives India a much stronger presence in the comicbook world.

“India
is an incredibly vibrant market, which Virgin already, through Virgin
Atlantic, has the pleasure of working in,” Branson said in a statement.
“I am delighted that Virgin Comics will not only help to launch the
Indian comic market and spin it into the West, but will develop new and
exciting talent.

Expect more of badly written, photoshop-inflicted renditions of characters, mythological or otherwise. On second thought, you never know, they might actually end up making something good. I can see loads of horny teens going in and asking the book-store for “Virgin Comics”. *giggle*