V for Vendetta, Hellboy, 300 — who doesn’t love these graphic novel films, right? But can you think of one Indian film of this sort? No, you cannot. But do not worry, because comic book company Yali Dream Creations has signed a contract with a production house for adapting their graphic novel The Caravan into a full-blown Hindi feature film.
The film which is still in pre-production was written and conceptualised by Shamik Dasgupta, the author of Ramayan 3392 A.D. “Caravan is Yali’s first publication and it was picked up by a production house owned by a young Bollywood actor. If I were to make a guesstimate about when the motion film would be made, I’d say 2018,” says Asvin Srivatsangam, the founder of Yali.
The 80-page-long graphic novel has everything an action fantasy film lover would crave - horror, crime, gore and (wait for it!) vampires. Set in Rajasthan, it is about a group of vampires disguised as gypsies in a caravan who go on a killing spree. A young boy, surviving their attacks, forms the crux of the story.
Asvin is more than excited about the movie deal. “It was completely serendipitous. The people from the production house had seen our graphic novel and approached us,” he says. A UI designer for a software company in California, Asvin narrates the story of how he founded Yali. “I had put together a story called Dynast: The Rise of Bherek White which is set in the far future where humans are extinct and felines rule the world. I had struggled to get a publisher on board. Then dawned the idea of starting a comic book company.” Yali Dream Creations LLC was registered as a company in California in June 2013.
Bherek White was his first creation and this comic man says he’d love to be Bherek at times. “When I was four or five years old, I had imagined myself to be Superman. But when I started creating Dynast, I would imagine myself as Bherek White,” he says.
Asvin is currently penning a story called Scions of the Cursed King, which has some elements from Game of Thrones.Yali is currently publishing a vigilante series called Rakshak: A Hero Among Us set in present-day New Delhi. Issues 1 and 2 of the origin series are already out and the third and fourth issues will be out very soon. We’re also creating another standalone horror graphic novel called The Village set in rural Tamil Nadu.