Back To The Future actor Christopher Lloyd, American comic actress Jane Lynch, British doyen Cary Elwes and American stand-up comedian Brad Garrett have also dubbed for the animals in Delhi Safari.
Hollywood and British cinema A-listers as a habit enjoy lending their voices to animation films in America. This is the first time they've done so for an Indian animation film.
Nikhil Advani plays down the achievement. "These names came into my picture because they believed in the theme, not because they had seen my films. Luckily Vanessa and Jason hadn't seen my Chandni Chowk To China, ha ha. "
Nikhil Advani's animation film Delhi Safari about the journey of four animals and birds from Mumbai to Delhi now has an international English-language version.
And the voices for the animals almost fell into Advani's lap. Names like Vanessa Williams and Jason Alexander came forward without any demands or fuss to be part of a film that espouses ecological equilibrium and animal welfare.
This is the first occasion when topnotch names in the Western entertainment business have dubbed for a Hindi film.
The voices for the animals in the Hindi version of Delhi Safari have been done by Akshaye Khanna, Govinda, Urmila Matondkar, Boman Irani, Suniel Shetty and Swini Khare.
In an interesting amalgamation of the East and West Nikhil Advani now intends to bring together the star-voices from the two versions of Delhi Safari to promote not just the film but also the much larger cause of Nature's imbalance and how to rectify it.
Says Nikhil, "Yes, we have collaborative plans for the voices in English and Hindi. Because the voices are the stars of the film. And we need to stress how ecological imbalance is bringing earth to doom.
At the moment I'm not at liberty to talk about what we've planned. We had three screenings of the English-3D version of Delhi Safari at Cannes earlier this month. We're being inundated with requests from buyers from all across the world. "
