Hasta La Motion!

Disney has always remained a fan-favourite across the globe since its inception. As the creator of the House of the Mouse, Walt Disney completes 118 years today, 5 December, his legacy still lives on. 

Disney movie franchises are getting bigger at the Indian box office with every passing day. From superhero films to animated films, creators have put their heart and soul might which has reaped expected rewards. In India, Disney has enjoyed a mass of loyal followers and admirers who showered infinite love which has reflected in the huge box office earnings. 2019 saw a plethora of Disney releases including live-action and animation films which made Disney’s pocket heavier.

The list includes – Captain Marvel (8 March), Dumbo (29 March), Penguins by Disneynature (April 17), Avengers: Endgame (26 April), Aladdin (24 May), Toy Story 4 (21 June), The Lion King (19 July), Artemis Fowl (9 August), Maleficent: The Mistress of the Evil (18 October) and Frozen 2 (22 November). Another one is lined up for 20 December – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. 

Disney-owned Marvel Studios, which celebrated 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) last year, scored big with the highest-grossing Hollywood film in the country – Avengers: Infinity War, which earned Rs 2.2 billion at the domestic box office, when none of the domestic Bollywood films managed to breach the Rs 2-billion mark. This year too, Avengers Endgame has grossed $4000 million in India itself, with global earnings of $2.790 billion, becoming the highest grossing film ever. 

Endgame crossed the Rs 50 crore mark on day one, Rs 100 crore on day two, Rs 150 crore by day three, Rs 200 crore on day five, Rs 250 crore on day seven and Rs 300 crore on day 10. It is the most successful Hollywood film in India, having already surpassed the lifetime total of its predecessor, Infinity War. Even Captain Marvel earned $707.6 million at the domestic box-office and was received with positive reviews of their new super-woman.

The Avengers franchise has been one of the most popular superhero film franchises in India gifted by the MCU which has seen huge uproar among the Marvel fanatics everytime a teaser or trailer was dropped. The culmination of the 21 film story was much much awaited, with fan theories going berserk.  And the result has made history!

The same audience broke the preconceived barriers on animation as a family entertainer as they embraced the story of a unique family in Incredibles 2 in 2018 which grossed over $369 million becoming the highest-grossing animated film from Hollywood in India, till the recently released animated theatrical Frozen 2 overthrew it and its predecessor Frozen (2013) grossing $400 million as of now. 

“Frozen 2 is a success. Goes from strength to strength. Emerges big favourite of kids and families. Crosses lifetime business of Frozen,” trade analyst Taran Adarsh had tweeted earlier.

In fact, The Walt Disney Company has left no stone unturned with the localisation and marketing of these movies is to make them more accessible to tier two and tier three audience where people want to watch a Hollywood film on big screen in their own language. The impact of localisation has grown immensely with studios sharpening their focus on making films more palatable for audiences in India, which  includes smart scripting and dubbing of the original content.

Frozen 2 has been dubbed by actor sisters Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Parineeti Chopra in Hindi, the Tamil dub features the voices of actor Shruti Haasan and popular television anchor Divyadarshini in the roles of protagonists Elsa and Anna respectively. While popular actor Nithya Menen has dubbed for Elsa in the Telugu version, superstar Mahesh Babu and Namrata Shirodkar’s seven-year-old daughter Sitara Ghattamaneni  has voiced for Baby Elsa.

Another animated movie Toy Story 4 grossed $421.8 million domestically, where Pixar Animation delivers another hilarious yet also deeply moving chapter in their blockbuster franchise. That brings us to notice that franchise films are no longer just sequels to previous installments but has much more to offer. With reboots and spin-offs, studios like Disney are now building cinematic universes which surely has a market to cater to in this country.

Apart from these, Disney this year had a slew of its live-action remakes of its animated classics which includes The Lion King, Aladdin and Dumbo. The Lion King dethroned Frozen by grossing $1550 million in India out of its $1 billion mark at the global box-office. Released on 12 July 2019, the Jon Favreau directorial took only 19 days to hit billion figures.

The Hindi version of The Lion King saw Bollywood ‘Badsaah’ Shah Rukh Khan lending his voice for Mufasa accompanied by his son Aryan, voicing for Simba. Bringing in Bollywood and other film industry biggies to voice for dubbed versions of its films, Disney has cleverly tapped on the right nerves of the Indian market.

Even the live-action, Aladdin debuted with $220.3 million (US$3.2 million), the year’s third best opening for a foreign film, though it received mixed reviews from the critics who were of the opinion that this was a redundant remake. Even Maleficent: Mistress of Evil went a little cold by earning $55 million, unlike its previous counterpart Maleficent, that bagged in $70 million, despite having Bollywood diva Aishwarya Rai Bachchan voicing for our favourite winged anti-heroine. Dumbo too fell flat despite the hype around it to watch the flying elephant in live-action, by earning just $45 million over the weekends.  

Multiplexes certainly play a big role in this case to boost the same as the screen count for big-ticket Hollywood title is always on the rise, by allocating more shows, rooted promotional strategies and fan engagement at multiplexes also helps build a greater appeal.

Disney India Studio entertainment head Bikram Duggal earlier said in an official statement, “This has been truly fascinating to see that fans loved the high-octane superhero action drama in Avengers: Endgame, making it the highest Hollywood grosser ever and the same audience embraced the heart-warming story of sisters in Frozen franchise.” 

Hollywood movies’ box office collections in India will definitely see an exponential growth with the coming year with the massive line-up of MCU’s Phase 4. We’ll only wait, watch and enjoy!

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Pixar released RenderMan version 23, featuring artist interactivity, enhanced support for Pixar’s USD (Universal Scene Description), and integration with SideFX’s recent release of Houdini 18 and its new solaris features. This major release of RenderMan moves the entire platform to a new level to support the next wave of cutting edge animation and visual effects.

“Pixar artists have always had ambitious goals and our culture is to continuously evolve RenderMan, USD, and our other technology to meet their needs. RenderMan 23 and the newest USD release each open up new creative possibilities. Used together they add up to even greater production leverage and quality. As always, we are excited to share these advancements with other studios across the film industry,” said Pixar Animation Studios CTO Steve May.

Version 23 improves the interactive artist experience on all content creation applications: Autodesk Maya, Foundry’s Katana, and SideFX Houdini. Important technical advances boost performance, stability, and enable new kinds of integrations. New features in Pixar’s USD allow all pipelines to more easily access the full capabilities of RenderMan.

“The SideFX team is thrilled about our new Solaris platform in Houdini 18 and its integration with Pixar tools.  Solaris delivers entirely new artistic possibilities for look-dev, layout, and lighting with a core based on Pixar’s production-savvy USD technology. RenderMan 23 reflects another facet of our collaboration with Pixar, providing a remarkable interactive path traced experience to Houdini 18 artists,” mentioned SideFX VP product development Cristin Barghiel.

RenderMan version 23 also delivers support for Houdini 18, recently released by SideFX, including its native USD Solaris tools that enable powerful new lookdev, layout and lighting workflows. Solaris artists have direct creative control of USD features and through USD’s Hydra they can immediately access the power of RenderMan. The core RenderMan for Houdini plugin has also been updated and extended for Houdini 18 to support the features in RenderMan version 23.

“Over the past year and a half at Blue Sky Studios we have completely rebuilt and modernized our entire production pipeline with RenderMan, Houdini, and USD playing critical foundational roles.  Each of these pieces of technology are industry-leading in their own right, but together they have offered us creative opportunities and efficiency gains we wouldn’t have dreamed of even just a few years ago.  As we begin our first feature film using these tools, we’re truly excited for what the future holds and for our continued partnership with the teams at Pixar and SideFX,”
added Blue Sky Studios technical supervisor, image pipeline Andrew Beddini.

This release also includes updates to system and library foundations to match the Visual Effects Reference platform 2018, delivering state-of-the-art rendering technology to studios that are taking advantage of the latest hardware and content creation frameworks.

RenderMan’s existing customers with a maintenance agreement are entitled to a free upgrade. Version 23 is also available now to individuals for non-commercial use. RenderMan is compatible with the following 64-bit operating systems: Linux CentOS/RHEL 7.2+, Windows 10 and 8.1, and macOS 10.13 and 10.14 (with 10.15 pending). RenderMan is also compatible with the following DCCs: Houdini 17.0, 17.5, and 18.0 (Indie available on the recent release of 17.5 and 18), Katana 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.5, and Maya 2018 (Update 3+) and 2019.

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Square Enix , the Japanese video game developer and publisher best known for console franchises like Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider and Dragon Quest, is returning to India for the second time  with an aim to explore business around mobile gaming market according to an interview of Bangalore Mirrior.

Unlike last time this time will be different said Square Enix India director Ryoma Matsui, roportedly.

“Our first entry into India did not go as we had intended. We found that the telecom infrastructure and the market for mobile games wasn’t yet conducive to a vibrant gaming market for our games,” Matsui added.

He further expressed that this is the right time to re- enter the Indian market as  there are cheap data rate, ease in making payment and  the scope of mobile gaming market is huge.

Earlier The company had set up a team in Mumbai in 2013, however,wind up operations a year later without releasing a single game. We hope this time for the company India

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Today, Bandai Namco dropped a brand new trailer of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 that outlines the Alabasta Arc, which is actually the beginning phase of the new One Piece game. In this arc, players will fight against Crocodile, who you may know as the president of the Baroque Works, in order to restore peace to the Kingdom of Alabasta.

The Pirate Warriors are back and bring with them a more explosive story, more environments and even crazier attacks in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4

The trailer itself is pretty short, and doesn’t spill much information or new media, however, it does show off Zoro rocking his original outfit in the manga/anime. This is probably the most notable takeaway from the trailer.

For the unversed: the Alabsta Arc is the 11th story arc in the larger One Piece manga and anime, and is also the fifth and final arc in the Alabasta Saga. In it, the Straw Hats finally reach the desert kingdom of Alabasta and begin their race across the land to reach Alubrana before a massive conflict breaks out between rebels and the kingdom’s royal guards. But of course, there are sinister forces working against the Straw Hats in order to prevent them from achieving this.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 is slated for release on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch on 26 March 2020 in Japan.

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The Centre told the Delhi High Court  that blocking of online gaming sites, including those of card games, was “technologically infeasible” as many states have enacted laws which partially or fully allow such activities.

On behalf of the central government, the ministry for electronics and information technology (MeitY) said that any potential blocking would have to determine whether the games are games of skill or games of chance, since some state governments have allowed sites to operate the former, while blocking games of chance.

According to BS report, the central government submitted an affidavit before a bench of chief justice DN Patel and justice C Hari Shankar telling the court that blocking online gaming sites such as card games is not technically feasible. The Delhi government, on the other hand, said it can only take action for gambling activities happening offline in Delhi as well as any online gaming sites that are hosted in Delhi. In addition to that court replies to another affidavit submitted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), that any necessary measures to stop illegal foreign exchange transactions were already in place.

The government was responding to a Delhi High Court order in an ongoing petition to block online gaming sites in India. The Delhi High Court had urged the central government and the Delhi state government to assess the petitioners’ demands to block gaming sites on the basis of skill or chance.

The petitioners Avinash Mehrotra and Deepti Bhagat had claimed that gaming and gambling websites are encouraging people to spend income on games of chance. It claimed no skill was involved in these games and such sites also allowed revenue to leak out of India since many are based outside the country.

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