Boy King is Night Tiger Animation’s Global Bet

By Pickle July 10, 2026

By Deepak Sharma, Pickle News Network

The most ambitious bet in Indian animation right now is being made by a director who spent a decade making films for everyone else. Jayant Kumar’s credits run from 1917 to Moon Knight. Night Tiger Animation’s current project is Boy King

Boy King is a 90-minute 3D animated feature in development at Night Tiger Animation Studios, drawing from the ancient Indian epic to chart a story of succession, grief, and identity. When the aging King Ilin falls, his youngest and most volatile son Dushyant is thrust into a succession crisis in Hastinapur — navigating conspiring ministers, questions over his legitimacy, and a rishi’s curse — forced to prove through trials of strength and dharma that he is more than a reckless boy. The film, conceived as a coming-of-age story in two-parts in the classical mould, asks a question: what does it cost a boy to become a king? That’s the first part of the film.

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The creative team has sought space in the mythology. Dushyant — best known in Indian literature as the husband of Shakuntala — has almost no documented early life in the original texts. The filmmakers reimagined him as the youngest of five children, the sole son among four older sisters, a structure drawn directly from director Jayant Kumar’s own family history. His father lost his father at 12, the youngest child in precisely that configuration, and the grief that followed through the 1970s and 80s — through his grandmother, his aunts, and his father — became the emotional substrate of Dushyant’s arc. The mythology provides the narrative; the family history provides the weight beneath it.

The Team

The studio is led by three principals whose combined backgrounds span some of the most technically demanding productions of the past decade. Jayant Kumar, director and writer, spent the formative years of his career as a senior animator at Framestore London, contributing to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, F1: The Movie, Moon Knight, 1917, and Aquaman, with earlier experience at Animal Logic in Australia — now part of Netflix Animation — as well as MPC Montreal and Psyop LA.

Abhi Singh, executive producer, brings a VFX production background from Framestore New York, where his credits include One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Abhi Singh and Jayant Kumar met in their first year at SCAD more than 13 years ago, training under animators with credits on The Lion King, Mulan, and Kung Fu Panda. Medha Yadav, associate producer, comes from a Big 4 consulting background and leads investor relations and operations, orienting the studio toward the specific demands of the Indian market and international partnership structures.

The Return

Jayant Kumar’s decision to base Night Tiger in Jaipur, India is, by his own account, the logical conclusion of an 18-year journey rather than a reaction to it. “I left India when I was 12 years old,” he said. “Coming back home after 18 years abroad, including 10 years working across the global animation and VFX industry, was always the plan. I didn’t move back to recreate what I’d worked on elsewhere. I moved back to tell my own stories, and to put everything I’d learned — the discipline, the craft, the standards — toward raising the bar for what Indian animation can be. Night Tiger is that bet: take the education and experience we gained abroad and bring it home, on our own terms.”

The Pitch

Jayant Kumar travelled to Annecy and the MIFA market this June, timing the trip to coincide with the launch of a proof-of-concept trailer for Boy King. Night Tiger is actively seeking co-financiers, development partners, sales agents, and distributors at an early stage, and is keeping its options open across the partnership spectrum. “Annecy is where we are meeting people who understand what we’re building,” Jayant Kumar said, stating the festival visit as a relationship-building exercise.

The longer ambition extends well beyond a single title. Night Tiger intends Boy King as the first proof of a broader thesis: that India can produce original animated IP of world-class standard across genre — dramatic, comedic, epic, intimate — not simply mythology-adjacent content for a domestic audience.