DreamWorks Animation Announces 'Monkeys Of Bollywood'

We had heard rumblings that DreamWorks Animation was developing a computer animated Bollywood movie, but had not heard much in terms of details until now. The company has announced via Variety that they have hired composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), Broadway lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Enchanted, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas) and husband-and-wife producing team Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges (Bend It Like Beckham, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging) to work on the animation studio's first animated feature musical. More details after the jump.

Monkeys of Bollywood was inspired by the Hindu epic poem "The Ramayana". According to Wikipedia:

"The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the other being the Mahabharata. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king. The name Ramayana is a tatpurusha compound of R?ma and ayana ("going, advancing"), translating to "Rama's Journey". The Ramayana consists of 24,000 verses in seven books (k???as) and 500 cantos (sargas), and tells the story of Rama (an incarnation of the Hindu preserver-God Vishnu), whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon king of Lanka, Ravana. Thematically, the epic explores the tenets of human existence and the concept of dharma."

The Mumbai-set story will revolve around "two monkeys who try to stop an ancient demon from conquering the world." The Bollywood-style animated musical has no release date yet.