The artificial intelligence technology that powered the Indian television series Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh is expanding its reach to Southeast Asia. Galleri5, the developer behind the show, is partnering with Collective Studios Historyverse and the Singhasari Special Economic Zone to create film and series properties drawn from Indonesian myths and history.
Historyverse, which manages original intellectual property and studio work for Collective Artists Network, will collaborate with local creatives and cultural specialists. The partnership aims to use production tools built by Galleri5 in India to develop projects across mythology, fantasy, history, and animation.
Echoes of Nusantara and Local Collaboration
The first project under discussion is a working title called Echoes of Nusantara. This original mythology-adventure will see Historyverse handle creative development, production, and intellectual property packaging. The team will work with local talent to prepare the project for potential financing, production, and distribution outside of Indonesia.
Vijay Subramaniam, founder and group CEO of Collective Artists Network, stated that the next global entertainment franchises will not all originate from Hollywood. He emphasized that every market has stories that deserve to travel further and that Indonesia possesses an extraordinary wealth of them. The ambition is to work with Indonesian creators to develop these stories into films, series, and larger entertainment properties for a worldwide audience.
Subramaniam noted that Galleri5 provides a new way to approach the scale of filmmaking while keeping the creative vision and stories at the center. The partnership allows for the integration of advanced technology with local narrative traditions.
G5 AI Studio and Production Scale
Galleri5’s main product, G5 AI Studio, integrates more than 200 AI models with purpose-built tools for storyboarding, character and world design, animation, visual effects, and film-quality video. The platform has already been used to create more than 10,000 ads and videos. The technology behind Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, launched by JioStar and Collective Media Network, was built and operated by Galleri5.
The company is currently developing workflows for Historyverse’s theatrical slate, which includes productions such as Chiranjeevi Hanuman The Eternal and Krishna. These projects provide Galleri5 with a foundation for refining its technology against real-world creative and production demands.
Rahul Regulapati, founder and CEO of Galleri5, described the next generation of global cinema as being built on a different technology foundation. He stated that Galleri5 is building this foundation with G5 AI Studio by bringing frontier AI models and filmmaking workflows into one platform. The company has already demonstrated the capabilities of this technology through films and television in India. The new venture with Indonesia offers an opportunity to take locally rooted stories to audiences around the world.
Economic and Cultural Impact
For Indonesian creators, the partnership represents a chance to match stories led by local talent and their own original intellectual property with tools designed to scale up production. Airlangga Hartarto, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for economic affairs and chairman of the National Council for Special Economic Zones, said the country has no plans to sit on the sidelines of AI development or simply act as a consumer of the technology.
Hartarto stated that Indonesia intends to help shape the technology. He noted that special economic zones allow the country to turn that ambition into real productivity, skilled jobs for young people, and new sources of growth on the path to an 8 percent economic expansion. Singhasari will introduce the venture to Indonesian creators, studios, investors, distributors, and creative-economy institutions. The zone will also help set up local partnerships and routes to market.
KR David Santoso KR, CEO of Lokanima and Singhasari Special Economic Zone, highlighted the historical ties between the region and India. He noted that the Kingdom of Singhasari flourished eight centuries ago on the land the zone now occupies as a hub for engineering, the arts, scholarship, and government. The culture was enriched by hundreds of years of contact with India. Santoso said the partnership aims to bring that history back to life by mastering the AI transformation. The goal is to build new competitiveness for Indonesia in the new-technology and digital-content subsectors, with Indonesian talent and intellectual property at the heart of the effort.
Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s ambassador to Indonesia, pointed out that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been part of Indonesian temple culture, wayang traditional puppet theater, and the popular imagination for over a millennium. He said India and Indonesia are now writing the next chapter of that shared story with artificial intelligence.
Source: Variety
