The project has already attracted an impressive cast, including global names such as Game of Thrones's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Pirates of the Caribbean and Lovejoy's Ian McShane, and a team of about 250 animation professionals featuring members who have worked on movies such as Shrek, Life of Pi, Star Wars and The Avengers.
However, for Ayman Jamal, who founded Barajoun Entertainment, the animation studio that is producing the film, the inspiration was less star-studded and far more personal.
"My inspiration was my kid, and myself," says the banker-turned-movie producer. "When I watched movies like Braveheart or Malcolm X when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, I was inspired. Why wasn't I inspired when I was 10, I asked myself? I asked my 5-year-old son what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said: 'Superman'. I love Superman, but I wish he'd said something possible, and I wanted to create this. To inspire kids with a real human superhero that they can aspire to."
He adds: “Superman is the reason I did this. I had to save my kid.”
What Jamal claims to have done is set up the first animation studio of its kind in the Middle East. Animation itself is no newcomer to the region, but in terms of full-feature production, Jamal is convinced Barajoun is unique.
"This is the first studio of this quality in Middle East. Initially we wanted to acquire one, but there was simply nothing on this level. There was nothing that was able to fulfil the pipeline to produce a full animation movie. A typical animated TV series would normally take a maximum of 20,000 hours to render. A movie like Bilal will take four to five million hours. To put it in perspective, Frozen took 60 million hours to render. Likewise, a full TV series will take 20 to 25 team members to work on. Bilal has more than 250. This complexity just didn't exist in the region until now."
The lack of such facilities was something Jamal says that he felt needed addressing.
"I was a banker, working in the US, but I was really passionate about movies and felt there was a gap in this region. We simply never share our content with the world, and I wanted to claim that area. American animation, European animation, it goes all around the world, but here we just make it for a local audience, to a local standard. CGI and animation is everywhere – 60 to 70 per cent of the ads you watch today are CGI. Probably 70 per cent of a film like Avengers is CGI. The actual filming takes maybe four to six weeks, then the CGI takes another two years. Even a TV commercial for say BMW, the car isn't really on a mountain, it's all CGI. But it's a misconception to think animation is a cheaper option. A feature film with Brad Pitt or Denzil Washington will take 16 weeks to shoot and put through post. For animation, you're talking about 150 weeks. Shrek cost US$120 million (Dh440.7m). A typical live blockbuster costs 20 or 30 million dollars.
"Bilal's hair alone took 960 hours to execute. That's one character. The most difficult part of animation or CGI is hair and clothes because of the way they move. When my studio manager came here from LA, he said he expected to stay for three months. He had developed 56 characters in the movies he'd worked on in 15 years. In Bilal there are 92 characters, not to mention one of biggest battle scenes in CGI history."
Production on Bilal, the true story of an African slave who was brought to the Middle East and grew to be a great leader, started at the beginning of 2013, although the project had been in development for many years, and Jamal hopes to have the movie completed by this November. Distribution is already in place for many markets around the world, including the Middle East through Gulf Film, and US/European negotiations are at an advance stage with at least three distributors.
Jamal says that he expects to see an early 2016 release, noting that he would rather avoid the end of 2015 due to the small matter of potentially clashing with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He does intriguingly hint at a possible regional premiere for the movie in December, however, if any remaining film festivals happen to be reading. Jamal is clearly acutely aware of the regional importance of the film: "We want to help develop the regional industry step by step. We're speaking to government entities about the possibility of opening an institute to graduate CGI artists so they can train and hopefully find a job. I always give the example of New Zealand, where Weta Digital has created a whole industry from nothing post-Lord of the Rings, and now New Zealand handles half of the US post-production. Everyone is watching us. People doubted we could develop this quality at the start, but after trailer went online they're taking us seriously. Everyone else in the region does TV, but we're the first here to be crazy enough to say: 'Let's do a movie', and not just for the region, but one for the whole world."
cnewbould@thenational.ae
