Inside View: Boy wonder

So we decided that Raju would not be Raju of Dholakpur. He would look the same but the costume would be different. His characteristics would be the same but his environment and friends would be different. Along side, his regular set of friends, the movie will feature an additional set of characters such as Daniel, Lucas, Maria and Don Pedro. It’s a complete reboot of Raju. But the team was confident about this reboot because kids love Raju’s cute charm, innocent aggression and stubbornness to stand up for good.

Once we decided to make him a superhero, the creative process was very focused. Bheem is a naturally gifted superhero, so we wanted Raju to be a sci-fi superhero. With a blend of being a hero and a die-hard patriot, Mighty Raju has become the first sci-fi superhero kid in India.

Moreover, I thought of this as an opportunity of introducing science, technology and gadgets to young minds. So we wanted to bring superhero Raju to children as soon as we could and we quickly developed Raju’s new universe. Dholakpur represents ancient India and

Aryanagar represents modern India. Bheem’s friends are neighbourhood children and Raju’s friends are his classmates. Mighty Raju is about innovations, heroism and patriotism, with Raju fighting robots and gizmos. In addition to brawn, Raju has amazing brains too — he is a prolific inventor and a science genius. Awesome strength and cool gadgets make Raju a mighty hero, hence the name Mighty Raju.

With the FIFA world cup in June 2014 in Brazil, I wanted to make a football-based film for children and hence decided that it is best to set the film in Rio, Brazil. The tagline of the film is “Soccer, Samba and Samosas”. A team of about 10 creative artistes from Green Gold

Animation went to Rio De Janeiro and recced for the movie. It only made better business sense to carry forth one of our characters into the film and Mighty Raju was the perfect fit for this football capper in Rio. We also recorded the music for the film in Brazil with latino vocalists and instrumentalists. Later on we roped in Sunidhi Chauhan and Bali Brahambhatt as lead singers.

We have also created a whole new line of merchandise for this film, which includes roller skates, caps, cushion covers, foil balloons, footballs and a wide range of T-shirts.