Virgin comics launches India show

BANGALORE: Virgin Comics, a collaboration between Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapur and British maverick entrepreneur Richard Branson, has announced the launch of its Indian operations Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation in Bangalore. Virgin’s comic titles including Devi and Snake Woman launched in the US in July, will now be available in the country.

Quoting a recent study that said the global media and entertainment industry will touch $1.3 trillion in the next seven years, film director and one of the founders of the company Shekhar Kapur said, “Some of us in the industry think that 70-75% of this figure or about $800-900bn will come from Asia.

After World War II, America has culturally colonised the world. It’s time for a reverse colonisation.” The first thing to be done is to seed characters with global relevance from Indian mythology. From creating comic books, we can move to making movies, games and animation, he said.

Virgin Comics will be launching its titles in English currently and introduce regional versions in Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese etc in the second phase. The books will be priced between Rs 10 and Rs 15.