MUMBAI: A decade after entertaining the children of India, animated cartoon character Chhota Bheem will fly abroad. The upcoming venture of the franchise has hit both the big and small screens and is set for a global release. The year 2018 seems bright for the production with KickO and Super Speedo on Sony Yay’s channel.

The production house is venturing for the first time in the international market with the upcoming 3D movie, Chhota Bheem: Kung-fu Dhamaka. The movie will fly to many countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, the US and the UK. The quality of VFX for the movie will be at par with international ventures.

Green Gold Animation chief strategy officer Srinivas Chilakalapudi said, “We want Chhota Bheem to be on a global level. As far as marketing strategies for international space are concerned, we are looking for tie-ups with FMCG and leisure brands.”

According to reports, the production house usually spends not more than a million dollar (between Rs 5-6.7 crore) on its feature films, including the expenses on marketing and promotion. The company, which has its own merchandise, is growing at over 20 per cent in revenues and is cash positive.

Green Gold Animation was founded in 2001. The company produced Vikram Betal and Krishna animation shows which convinced Pogo TV to give a chance to the production house. Chhota Bheem made his first appearance in 2008 on Pogo TV. It succeeded and continued to run. The company is financed by Samir Jain, Raj Viswanadha, Arun Shendurnikar and Nidhi Anand.

The show was aired on Sirasa TV in Sri Lanka with the name ‘Chandi’. Chhota Bheem is also aired in Pakistan on Cartoon Network Pakistan and Pogo in Hindi. The show received high ratings and today Chhota Bheem is watched more than any other cartoon show in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Not only this, the company inked a deal with Netflix to digitally broadcast Mighty Little Bheem - a spinoff of Chhota Bheem and Amazon Prime for the show Kalari Kids - a lost martial art form of Kerala (Kalaripayattu).

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