DreamWorks Animation is fast-tracking the studio’s first CGI animated musical, Monkeys of Bollywood, signing on composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), Broadway lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Enchanted, Broadway’s Wicked) and husband-and-wife producing team Gurinder Chadha (director of Bend It Like Beckham) and Paul Mayeda Berges.
According to Variety, the Bollywood-style animated musical is inspired by the Hindu epic poem ‘The Ramayana’. The Mumbai-set project revolves around two monkeys who try to stop an ancient demon from conquering the world. The poem depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king.
It’s certainly an interesting idea, and while Dreamworks started off with handrawn musicals, they generally dropped the tunes for CG, so it’ll be interesting to see how it work out.