Disney UTV unveils three titles

Heading the slate is satirical comedy drama P.K., which reunites 3 Idiots director Rajkumar Hirani and star Aamir Khan. Slated for release in 2014, the film is produced by Mumbai-based Disney UTV along with Rajkumar Hirani Films and Vidhu Vinod Chopra Productions.

3 Idiots was India’s highest-grossing Hindi movie of all time, with an Indian box office haul of $32.3m (Rs2.02bn), until it was overtaken a few weeks ago by Disney UTV’s Chennai Express, which grossed $35.96m (Rs2.25bn), according to Boxofficeindia.com.

Disney UTV is also producing musical comedy Jagga Jasoos, reuniting the director and star of Barfi!, Anurag Basu and Ranbir Kapoor.

Katrina Kaif also stars in the film which is scheduled to start shooting in November for release in the last quarter of 2014. The film is being developed as a franchise with the potential for sequels, a TV show, merchandise, comics and online games.

Rounding out the Disney-branded slate is ABCD 2 – the sequel to India’s first 3D dance film directed by choreographer-filmmaker Remo D’Souza and featuring dancing star Prabhudheva in the lead. D’Souza recently met with Los Angeles-based executives at Disney and Marvel to discuss the project, which will partly shoot in the US.

The three Bollywood tent poles will be released in addition to Disney UTV’s productions under the UTV Motion Pictures banner and UTV Spotboy banner. Disney UTV was formed last year by the merger of the US studio and Ronnie Screwvala’s local powerhouse UTV Software Communications.

“Since the integration of Disney and UTV in India last year, the Studios team has been actively looking for the right stories to develop into our first set of Disney branded local productions,” said Siddharth Roy Kapur, managing director, Studios, Disney UTV.

“With P.K., Jagga Jasoos and ABCD 2, we are confident we have a slate of movies that capture the essence of the Disney brand - heartwarming, uplifting and fun for the whole family.”