Meanwhile, India gets it's own superhero

On June 23rd, Bollywood's first superhero movie (correction: Wikipedia claims he's the sixth- but nobody remembers the first five anyway), Krrish, will hit cinemas in India. Krrish is the sequel (a rarity in Indian cinema!) to "Koi... Mil Gaya," an 'ET-meets-Forrest Gump' science-fiction movie that made oodles of money in it's homeland and swept quite a few awards, too. I thought it was kinda crap but I couldn't get past the pseudo-ET stuff, frankly (though I have to admit, star Hrithik Roshan- who's daddy directed both movies- wasn't too bad in it).

I wasn't very interested in the sequel given it's pedigree but I must admit to being piqued after reading this New York Times article about the movie. Since the Times tends to block access to their content after a while, I'll just cut and paste the relevant bits (emphasis is my own).

Rakesh's biggest concern was making Krrish look sufficiently world class. After all, audiences that have lapped up Western heroes — "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" are the No. 3 and No. 2 Hollywood releases in India, after "Titanic" — would have little patience with cheesy special effects. So Mr. Roshan turned to the Hong Kong-based action choreographer Tony Ching, acclaimed for his work on "House of Flying Daggers" and "Hero."

This Bollywood-Chinese martial arts combination presented some distinctive challenges. Because Mr. Ching speaks no English, Mr. Roshan narrated his script via an interpreter. In an e-mail interview (also translated by interpreter), Mr. Ching said that what attracted him was the story, which "was very romantic and touching."

"Their ideas of the action were beautiful and exactly fit my style," he said. "Everything just matched well."

To fit Bollywood's comparatively smaller budgets, Mr. Ching slashed his fee — though even that bargain rate, Mr. Roshan said, was more than the paychecks of India's biggest stars. Last January, Hrithik went to Hong Kong and trained for 30 days, learning how to wield sticks and swords and adopt the correct postures for the harnesses. At the end of the daily six-hour sessions, Hrithik said in an interview in Mumbai, he "barely had enough strength to crawl into bed."

The action sequences, which Rakesh described as poetry, were filmed over 90 days, mostly in Singapore. To perfect the visual effects, Rakesh imported two experts from Hollywood, Marc Kolbe and Craig A. Mumma, who worked on "Godzilla" and "Independence Day" (and also on "Koi ... Mil Gaya"). The orchestration for the film's background score was done in Prague.

That's quite a team they got there- though it must be said that good action choreography and visual effects does not equate to a brilliant movie.

Will this be India's Spider-Man or it's 3 Dev Adam (i.e. so baaaaad that it's good!)? More importantly, will it rake in the big bucks? 3 more days 'til we find out! One thing's for sure- this movie is going to usher in Superhero Season into Indian cinemas (Superman Returns on June 30th!).

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