From Salman Khan's Chulbul Pandey to Little Singham, Bollywood characters gain traction in kids' content

Film poster of Dabangg 3

Adapting popular Bollywood franchises to kids’ animated content is emerging as a strong trend. The latest addition to this space is Salman Khan’s popular character Chulbul Pandey from the Dabangg franchise.

Animation company Cosmos Maya recently announced a two-season series based on the character Chulbul Pandey.

“We will first launch season-1, which will have 52 and half hours of content and the, season-2, with total hours coming up to 104 and half hours. Both the seasons will be launched next summer in April-May-June on both OTT and TV simultaneously,” Anish Mehta, CEO, Cosmos Maya, told Moneycontrol.

On asking him why he chose Dabangg’s Chulbul Pandey for an animation series, he said, “The brand [Dabangg/Chulbul Pandey] is popular as a movie franchise. The franchise has found traction across the board including Tier II and Tier III markets and the films have a mass base. Plus, these films were released in Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada versions making their reach wider.”

There is no denying that both Dabangg and Chulbul Pandey have had strong traction on the big screen, but why the expansion to an animated series on OTT and TV?

To this producer Arbaaz Khan said, “The next logical step to further grow the Dabangg franchise was to enter the animation space which offers unparalleled creative freedom with storytelling, and the focus is on shorter standalone stories. When coupled with the mass appeal of the characters, we foresee that the animation series as full-family entertainment shows which will take the franchise to great heights.”

What's the need to adapt Bollywood characters for animation content? Why not experiment with new content?

Experts say that for established IPs, the conversion rate i.e., new viewers getting hooked on to the show is higher because of the character's popularity. New characters take time to attract audience. Also, the shelf life of such shows which are inspired by Bollywood IPs have longer shelf life.

The marriage of popular Bollywood characters with kids’ animation has proved effective in terms of viewership. Take the example of shows like Little Singham, Golmaal Jr and Fukrey Boyzzz.

When Little Singham, which is the adaptation of Ajay Devgn’s Singham franchise, was launched on Discovery Kids in April 2018, the channel’s viewership jumped 400 percent.

Not just viewership, even the advertiser interest increased, and ad revenues reportedly grew by more than 500 percent.

The creators of Little Singham, Reliance Animation, also came up with another Bollywood inspired series Golmaal Jr, which is based on director Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal franchise.

“In India, we have grown seeing mythological characters in animation, and the main reason for that is the popularity of those characters. The mythological characters are so strong that the producers were not required to spend on publicity and popularising them. Similar is the case with adaptation of Bollywood characters in animation," said Tejonidhi Bhandare, COO, Reliance Animation.

"And Bollywood characters have become popular amongst all age groups by default,” he added.

It is this strong traction for such shows that made Discovery Kids become the second most watched channel soon after Little Singham's launch.

Same was the case when the channel had launched Fukrey Boyzz. Time spent on the channel after the show's launch had increased by 19 percent.

"The viewership for both the shows continues to grow in the current times as well. Kids are consuming a lot of content during this period and both are different genres. Little Singham falls under super-hero category while Golmaal Jr. under humour," said Bhandare.