{"id":611,"date":"2006-01-07T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-07T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2006\/01\/news-flash\/"},"modified":"2006-01-07T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-07T14:21:00","slug":"news-flash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2006\/01\/news-flash\/","title":{"rendered":"News Flash"},"content":{"rendered":"

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


British mogul Richard Branson is getting into the comicbook biz.<\/p>\n

Branson
\nand his Virgin Books have teamed with scribe Deepak Chopra, filmmaker
\nShekhar Kapur and Gotham Entertainment Group to launch Virgin Comics
\nand Virgin Animation.<\/p>\n

Virgin Comics will have offices in New York City, while Virgin Animation will be based in Bangalore, India.<\/p>\n

Shingles
\nwill focus primarily on Asia as an area to inspire and create content
\nand drive revenue, though the operation intends to reach a global
\naudience. In addition to creating and publishing comics, the principals
\nplan to take their properties and characters and parlay them into
\nmovies, animation, toys, videogames and consumer products.<\/p>\n

The
\nprincipal architects behind the partnership and the formation of the
\ncompanies are Gotham Entertainment topper Sharad Devarajan and Chopra’s
\nson Gotham. The pair are spearheading the operations of Virgin Comics
\nand Virgin Animation, with Devarajan serving as CEO and Gotham Chopra
\nas chief creative officer. They have tapped Indian advertising exec
\nSuresh Seetharaman to serve as prexy of Indian operations.<\/p>\n

Devarajan and Gotham Chopra told Daily Variety <\/i>the
\ntwo companies will spend the next 12-18 months staffing the Indian
\noperation with approximately 150 people, most of them artists.<\/p>\n

“For
\nSharad and I, this has been our dream,” Chopra said. “And when we were
\ngoing over potential partners for this, Richard was somebody that was
\nat the top of our list, in our fantasy. It’s amazing that we have now
\nall come together.”<\/p>\n

“We hope to create content that not only
\nreaches a global audience but also helps start a creative renaissance
\nin India,” said Devarajan, who will continue to operate his Gotham
\nEntertainment — South Asia’s largest comics publisher — as a separate
\nentity.<\/p>\n

The first offering from Virgin is scheduled to debut
\nmidyear from filmmaker John Woo. The helmer is creating an original
\ncomic property under Virgin Comics’ Director’s Cut line, one of three
\nseparate lines created for the company. The others are the
\nIndian-infused Shakti line and the Maverick line.<\/p>\n

Woo and Gotham Chopra previously teamed on the MGM actioner “Bulletproof Monk,” which Woo directed and Chopra exec produced.<\/p>\n

Partnership
\ngives Virgin its first stab at the comics and animation businesses and
\nalso gives India a much stronger presence in the comicbook world.<\/p>\n

“India
\nis an incredibly vibrant market, which Virgin already, through Virgin
\nAtlantic, has the pleasure of working in,” Branson said in a statement.
\n“I am delighted that Virgin Comics will not only help to launch the
\nIndian comic market and spin it into the West, but will develop new and
\nexciting talent.<\/p>\n

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*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}