As a common saying goes, ‘All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them’; dreams are the driving force for bigger achievements and milestones in life. But Choocha, Hunny and Laali of Fukrey Boyzzz have given a twist to make dreams a reality, which leads to a riot of fun, laughter and adventure. Audience will get to witness their ‘Friendship+Dosti=Fukrapanti’ from tomorrow, 12 October on Discovery Kids. 

Nobody knows better the power of dreams better than these three friends. Every time Choocha has an outlandish dream, Hunny tries to make sense of it by putting together an equally outlandish ‘desi jugaad’. While Laali tries to warn them, Bholi Punjaban, their nemesis is always in fray to sabotage the whole plan. But somehow, these motley crew of misfits manage to weasel their way out of trouble and get some good laughs along the way. Fukrey Boyzzz is a rib-tickling production that captures the innocent and harmless masti/mischief of kids. 

Inspired by the popular movie franchise, Fukrey, Fukrey Boyzzz is the second animated IP of Discovery Kids based on a Bollywood franchise, after the hugely successful Little Singham, which was based on the franchise Singham. 

Uttam Pal Singh

Talking to Animation Xpress about another Bolly-inspired-animated-IP, Discovery Kids head Uttam Pal Singh commented, “We’re happy to be kind of trend setters in this format. To get this trend going. Animation as an industry is definitely entertaining, and Bollywood is almost like a religion here. So, the two joining forces together is sure to gain more traction. So, that’s one part. From the audience point of view, the characters were so appealing, that we decided to take it a shot. We also had a lot of other things to look at too. More and more, we saw the Fukrey franchise, we saw great potential, wrapped into a setting and that’s the idea we pitched it to Excel and they loved it. Leveraging the brand’s strength is the popularity of the actors that would definitely attract more eyeballs. It was a very conscious decision to resemble the animated characters to the actors. We brought in the whole cast and I think their animated versions found their own space in the series by adding more layers. It’s like sitcom that you want to come back to everytime. I think Fukrey Boyzzz is going to lift the industry.” 

For Fukrey Boyzzz, Discovery Kids has teamed-up with Excel Entertainment which marks the debut of the production company helmed by actor Farhan Akhtar and producer Ritesh Sidhwani in the animated and television space. Being asked about his experience on this collaboration and plans on making a film out of it, Sidhwani said, “The launch of Fukrey Boyzzz opens new horizons for us. We are making our foray into animation and are enamoured with how this series has shaped-up. I am extremely excited to have characters from Fukrey spread joy to everyone with their crazy antics at school. Honestly, if you’re asking me if I’d do an animated film on the same character experiences, yes I will. Because these characters are so iconic, the animation that Discovery Kids has created has the potential to grow further in terms of short form content for the targeted age groups. We would like to grow on that rather doing a theatrical, as now, we have the best of both live-action and animation with Fukrey and Fukrey Boyzzz respectively. 

Fukrey has been a fan favourite since its release in the comedy space of Bollywood with the characters made so relatable and funny by the actors Pulkit Smarat, Varun Sharma, Manjot Singh and Richa Sharma. But remading it into animated series that targets a whole new target audience, has surely been a challenging task for the Discovery kids team. 

Megha Tata

Asserts Discovery South Asia managing director Megha Tata, “When we did Little Singham, with the premise of a successful movie franchise, we thought that there’s a possibility to make it in animation and cater to the kids. With the success of Little Singham, we realised that there’s clearly a space out there. And that gave us a belief when Fukrey was out, the team at Discovery Kids saw an opportunity and worked with Excel, put a team of writers, content creators and animators to create this wonderful product. This makes us believe that it’s not about just creating animation of a successful movie franchise because if it was that easy then, lot many people would have done it. Also it’s about how you package it, write it, storytell it and how you make it relatable to kids is what makes the difference, without losing the essence of the original characters. All of us have a child in us and the idea was to bring it alive on screen within a school setting.” 

Reiterating Tata, Pal Singh too stated, “The work done by the director and the writer, Excel team, they’ve put an amazing DNA to the franchise. That’s like half the work done. The point was that whatever we do with the characters or the franchise is that we don’t mess with the DNA. We want to appeal to the audience who are already familiar with the brand, and at the same time we want to introduce our brand Fukrey Boyzzz to a whole new audience, through kids series. I think we’re able to sync those two holes and that was a little challenging. So writing was the key and very crucial as it’s a character comedy show and not a slapstick comedy.”

The actors are equally excited and expectant of the animated series that already looks so promising and a clear win. Sharma exclaimed, “I’m very excited for Fukrey Boyzzz, it’s a great feeling for any actor to have an animated version of the character he played. Choocha is a special character as I debuted with it. The way the character is animated is very lovable and cute. I think people will get smiles on their faces by seeing the episodes, posters, trailers, and songs. I hope we can spread more happiness and laughter to parents and children alike.”

Pulkit Samrat, Varun Sharma, Manjot Singh and Richa Sharma with their animated versions

The Discovery team also has an extensive plan of marketing strategies in place, and have partnered with Black White Orange to take care of the licensing and merchandising deals. “We have plans for licensing and merchandising for the show. The actors have already endorsed it – from tshirts and all. Excel is behind it to get it out there and help us. We have some disruptive marketing in place. And more will be unveiled soon,” Pal Singh noted. 

Releasing tomorrow, Fukrey Boyzzz looks quite promising and expectations are high as Tata concluded, “My expectation is that it will double up the performance which Little Singham did for us and take the ranking further to be in the top three position and hopefully have more engagement not only with the kids but with the parents.” 

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Disney has brought the super-book comic hero back to life with new animated series, The Rocketeer, which features a young girl named Kit Secord, who takes to the skies to protect her community after becoming the surprise recipient of a rocket-pack that gives her the ability to fly.

The Rocketeer will also include many guest stars, including Phylicia Rashad, Marlo Thomas (That Girl), Annie Potts (Toy Story), Rahul Kohli (iZombie), and D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place). The series also stars Frank Welker (voice of Scooby-Doo!), Callan Farris (Gabby Duran & The Unsittables), Navia Robinson (Raven’s Home), Maria Bamford (Arrested Development), Kari Wahlgren (DC Super Hero Girls), Maurice LaMarche (Futurama), Charlie Adler (The Transformers franchise), Parvesh Cheena and Ted Allen.

Set to premiere on 8 November, The Rocketeer is developed and executive produced by Nicole Dubuc (Transformers: Rescue Bots), with Michael Kenny (Disney’s Miles From Tomorrowland) as the supervising director. Beau Black (Disney’s The Lion Guard) is the songwriter, and Dominic Lewis (Disney’s DuckTales) is the composer. The series is produced by Wild Canary in association with Disney Junior.

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One Piece: Stampede released to enormous success this Summer in Japan. Funimation will be bringing the film to North American theaters later this month, and will not only be screening the original release with English subtitles but an English dubbed release for the film as well. This is big due to the original release for the English dub being paused for the moment in the main anime series, so fans of the dub will have a lot to look forward to.

IGN shared a new trailer for the English dub release of the film on behalf of Funimation, and it shows both older and newer additions to the English dub cast in action. Check it out in the video above!

The English dubbed release of the film will be seeing many returning cast members from the anime series including Colleen Clinkenbeard, Christopher R. Sabat, Luci Christian, Eric Vale, Sonny Strait, Brina Palencia, Stephanie Young, Patrick Seitz, Ian Sinclair, Mike McFarland, Kyle Hebert, Matthew Mercer, T. Axelrod, Jonathan Brooks, Felecia Angelle, Brad Venable, DC Douglas, and Chris Rager as Blackbeard.

The new trailer for the film shows a few bits of new footage not seen in previous trailers including some of the fight between the Supernovas against Douglas Bullet, more cameos of fan-favorites returning to the anime franchise, and more of the Straw Hats in action. But fans will see more for themselves soon enough as Funimation will be bringing One Piece: Stampede to the United States with an English dub on 26 and 30 October 2019

The non-canon film will feature new characters to the franchise as well, with Daman Mills confirmed to be the English voice of the film’s central villain Douglas Bullet and Mick Wingert as Bthe mysterious M.C. of the Pirate Festival, Buena Festa. Other confirmed new additions include Anthony Bowling as Donald and Macy Anne Johnson as Ann.

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Netflix has recently become notorious for its geo-fencing strategies. Also known as geo-blocking, the practice involves setting up a virtual perimeter around a real-world geographical area, such as the United States, India or Scotland. Think of it as the digital counterpart to a national border. If you’re not within the confinements of a geo-fence, then some features might not be available to you.

The technology can be quite useful towards guaranteeing the security of, say, expensive goods from one location to another. In fact, several application kits allow you to set up perimeters wherein unloading is permitted. Netflix, on the other hand, is effectively using geo-fencing to discriminate among its users.

Although the subscription rarely varies by more than a couple of dollars from the standard $8, the total library size you have access to can change by as much as 2,500 titles between users in the U.S. and those in countries such as Portugal, Egypt, Iran, Austria, Taiwan, Poland, Morocco, and many more. For this reason, many subscribers have tested for themselves just how good PIA VPN is when trying to mitigate the immense regional dissimilarities Netflix service subjects them to.

Why Netflix geo-blocks in the first place

If you live in the U.K., you won’t be able to stream How I Met Your Mother, Dr. House, The West Wing, Parks and Recreation, and much more of the best content that the service has to offer. Some of you might pay more than the average U.S. or Canadian subscription and still not get the perks. On the other hand, those living in the U.S. were forced to wait six months before being able to watch Downton Abbey.

The issue is that your Netflix account takes your current location as a way to discriminate which things you can and can’t watch. Netflix’ geo-fencing isn’t necessarily malice. Rather, it is a consequence of the policies that Hollywood movies and TV studios implement for the content they stream online. As different markets were found to have different needs, media conglomerates began to enforce the copyrights to their content on a country by country basis.

Essentially, this practice is a selective service offered according to the residency of the customer, which is a discriminatory practice. No matter where you’re from, going abroad will most likely prevent you from being able to watch your favourite Netflix shows. If you’re an American citizen currently visiting Eastern Europe or the Middle East, you won’t able to stream the same shows and movies you did on U.S. territory.

How to by-pass Netflix geo-fences

Fortunately, Internet users from everywhere regularly pay to access the world’s biggest online subscription video service and have found a way to by-pass Netflix’s geo-blocking. Using the latter’s own weapons against them, it is now possible to alter your IP address (your metaphorical license place while surfing the Internet highways) to match that of a U.S. client. In other words, you can travel anywhere and still connect to Netflix with an American IP if you re-route your Internet traffic.

This is the chief reason why Virtual Private Network (VPN) services have become so widespread and successful. Of course, they offer you amazing data protection and banking-level security while browsing the web, but aside from this, they help you by-pass Netflix’s geo-blocking from anywhere in the world in an instant.

Some of the best players in the VPN industry, including Private Internet Access, have tweaked their applications and server range so as to make it possible for you to experience perfect streaming regardless of where you are. More importantly, PIA has made its offer so competitive that the service requires no more than three dollars for an optimal subscription. With access to over 3,000 servers spread across over 30 countries worldwide, Netflix won’t be able to hide anything from you.

Remember, however, that not all countries understand their peoples’ use of the Internet in the same way. Russia, for instance, has outlawed the use of VPN services. For this reason, it is necessary to exercise some legal precaution when using your VPN on the go.

The right to access online content

It is unlikely that advocates of consumers’ rights or private agents will soon fall back on their promise to deliver equal access to content on the Internet regardless of where you come from or travel to. For some time ahead, there will be an on-going clash between streaming services like Netflix, who often protect the abusive regional copyrights of corporate studios and VPN providers that offer Internet security and anonymity.

Netflix has attempted to block numerous such servers because the latter was used by people who wanted to maintain access to their favourite content while traveling. VPNs have continuously responded to these practices by creating new servers and new regional access points. Ultimately, the hassle to continuously block VPNs and prevent their users from exercising their right to view what they’ve paid for is far more expensive for Netflix than it is for VPN providers to compensate for blacklisting.

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Tencent has revealed the upcoming update to PUBG Mobile version 0.15.0, which will start rolling out from 16 October. The social media handles of the popular battle royale game have been teasing some of the new features that will come to the game for a while. Some of the new additions include the ability to ride a helicopter, revive fallen teammates, rocket launcher, air raid, to name a few.

Post  Call of Duty Mobile surpassed 100 million downloads in the first week of its launch,  Tencent acknowledged the craze with the list of new upgrade to glued the existing players of PUBG Mobile.

Payload Mode:

• EvoGround – Payload Mode: On the basis of the classic competition, increase the flight vehicle helicopter experience land and air combat, compete for the power of the superweapon box to feel the heavy fire weapon, and use the communication tower to recall the eliminated teammates, new gameplay, firepower upgrade, doubling the double!
• Flying Vehicle: Find the helipad on the island map, you can drive and ride the helicopter to battle from land as well as air
• Super Weapon Box: Timing refreshed weapon box, activated after 3 minutes of refresh, you can pick up airdrop guns, three-level armor suits, heavy fire weapons, and other supplies
• Recalling teammates: Pick up the eliminated teammate ID card and go to the communication tower to recall the teammates!
• Heavy fire weapons:
  • RPG-7 rocket launcher: classic rocket launcher, using rockets
  • M3E1-A missile: a missile that uses a rocket to launch a tracking vehicle
  • M79 grenade launcher: single grenade launcher using 40mm grenade
  • M134 heavy machine gun, using 7.62mm bullets
  • MGL Grenade Launcher: Use 40mm Grenade
• New Props:
  • Air Raid Locator: Airstrike bombing of the target area, which can be used to block roads or strategically cover
  • Vehicle repair kit: Respond to part of the health value of the vehicle and repair damaged tires

New Gun – Desert Eagle:

• The Desert Eagle has the highest damage and bullet speed in PUBGM’s existing pistol-type firearms, which will be available on all maps
• Desert Eagle has 62 damage, can be equipped with red dot sights, holographic sights, various magazines and laser sights that help improve shoulder accuracy
• Compared to other firearms, the amount of damage and the speed of the bullets are outstanding, but in contrast, they have strong recoil when shooting with them
• The gun uses a .45 caliber bullet and can be loaded with 7 rounds by default
• It can be increased to 10 rounds after the expansion of the magazine

New mechanism – climbing system/ledge grab:

• Supporting players to climb in the air allows players to move between buildings and buildings, containers and containers, allowing players to go to places that were previously inaccessible, thus changing the player’s ability to move, explore and survive
• How to Ledge Grab: After pressing the jump button to jump, find the right time in the vacant state and press the jump button again to achieve the climb operation, which takes effect on all maps

New mechanism – fuel barrel explosion mechanism: The fuel oil barrel will explode after being attacked by firearms and throwing objects, causing range damage to the surroundings

New spray function – Graffiti:

• With the new spray function, players with spray props can personalise the spray on any object, like walls in the battle scene
• Spraying is a consumable item. It takes 1 shot once, and players can carry up to 4 different types of spray into the battle

Added first-person training ground: Now you can choose to enter the first-person training ground

• Newbie task: Newly registered players can log in every day to unlock daily novice tasks, and receive daily novice gifts

Add a new partner reward:

• When the intimacy between the partners reaches 1000, the exclusive title of the partner can be obtained
• When the score reaches 2000, 2500 and 3000, a new partner standing position can be obtained

Add player information tab: When the other players are clicked on the left side of the chat and invitation team, the player’s information tab will be displayed on the right side of the interface

Add a gift-giving scene: Now you can give space gifts to other players during chat, team formation, and battle settlement. The settlement can also increase the popularity value for the player

Added grenade skin: The current grenade can also be personalised, the model loaded with the grenade skin will not change, and the scope of the explosion damage will not change

Add skydiving gliding props: Added 2 gliding props, these items are tied to the hand, adding blue smoke, coloured smoke

Add new store close-up: When the player tries on a hat, helmet, face towel or backpack, it will automatically switch to the close-up of the bust

New wearable glasses:

• After updating the client, the glasses and the face towel no longer share a field, and the glasses and all the face masks that do not block the eyes can be worn together
• After the background update, players who are still using the old version will not be able to see the eyes when they wear the glasses. You can see them when you update to version 0.15.0

Performance optimisation:

• Fixed some resource loading issues and improved fluency in combat
• Optimised the weapon loading logic, the player will be more smooth when entering the field of view
• Reduce the CPU usage of the main thread caused by UI logic, reduce the power consumption and heat of the device
• Optimised the performance of the low-end machine to improve the smoothness of the performance on low-end phones

Graphic optimisation:

• Optimised the performance of weapons and clothing art, improved the quality of textures, the accuracy of models, the calculation of lighting, etc
• Hall interface light and shadow optimization – enhanced the performance of the hall light and shadow

Controls Optimisation:

• When the main lens control finger is in effect, the lens control function of the half screen of the subsequently inserted moving joystick is shielded. When the finger on the lens control side is raised, the lens control operation on the rocker side is realised.
• After implementation, it can reduce the probability of the player moving the lens by mistake after opening the mirror, and get a smoother shooting experience

Gun action:

• When holding different types of firearms in the game, it will make different gun movements according to the type of hand-held firearms

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