NEW HOLLYWOOD THRILLER BASED ON INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
By Arun Kumar, Washington, 6 September 2007 (IANS)

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Comics is teaming up with Hollywood's New Regency Productions to produce a thriller mined from Indian mythology with filming likely to start as early as 2008 in India. Filmmaker John Moore, the creative maverick behind films "Flight of the Phoenix", "Behind Enemy Lines", and most recently a remake of the classic thriller "The Omen", will direct the new film entitled "Virulents".

Twentieth Century Fox will handle distribution of the film based on a graphic novel created by Virgin Comics, an entertainment company founded by Sir Richard Branson with author Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur. "Mythology is reality re-told, it's lingering truths informing the dark corner of our minds that drives our hearts to beat a little faster. And so it is with the deep-core realities of the Myth of Raktaveej, the sickening pulse that drives us to the insanity of 'Virulents'," said Moore in Los Angeles.

"Soldiers in combat stress often lose all sense of 'reality' and 'logic' - preferring instead to clutch a rabbit's foot and pray. In these cauldrons of fear and pain, a little myth can go a long way.

"And so it will be with 'Virulents' - modern soldiers once again fear to tread an ancient battlefield - and face what legions of would-be conquerors faced before them: the sobering reality that fear can turn the mythological into reality. This is the magnetic draw of the myth behind 'Virulents' - irresistible to me."

Mined from the rich regional lore of South Asia, "Virulents" is actually a re-invention of the Raktaveej myth, a demon that, as legend says, reproduced clones from his blood every time he was wounded in battle.

Set in the Bermuda triangle-like hills of the Hindu Kush after 9/11, "Virulents" follows a motley crew consisting of American and Indian soldiers who must join forces as they respectively rove the Afghan hills in search of a lost platoon and missing weapon of mass destruction.

But rather than stumble upon the militants they are expecting to find, they encounter a demon-like menace unlike the world has ever seen and must re-think their strategy and figure out a way to survive this confounding and rapidly growing evil.

"The rapid evolution of 'Virulents' from graphic novel to feature film embodies the mission of Virgin Comics, wherein young creators from India can mine the rich cultural and mythic tradition of their country to create stories that reach a global audience," said Virgin Comics CEO Sharad Devarajan. "Virgin studio of Indian artists and writers are changing the creative perception of India from an outsourcer to a source."

The comic book was created by Virgin Comics' Bangalore-based studio of artists and writers and led by the creative team of Shamik Dasgupta and Dean Ruben Hyrapiet.

"'Virulents' is an example of where we see India's creativity going in the next decade and beyond. The fact that young creators can mine their ancestral vault of mythology, re-invent it, and get a major film studio like Fox excited to build a film franchise from it proves that Indian creators are amongst the world's best and can think far beyond Bollywood," commented Virgin Comics chief creative officer, Gotham Chopra.

Virgin's CEO Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra, and Hollywood producer Seth Jaret will produce the film.