Kochadaiiyaan: The Legend (transl. King with mane) is a 2014 Indian Tamil-language animated period action film written by K. S. Ravikumar and directed by Soundarya Rajinikanth. It is India's first photorealistic motion capture film, featuring characters whose designs were based on the appearance and likeness of their respective actors. The film stars Rajinikanth and Deepika Padukone (in her Tamil debut), with R. Sarathkumar, Aadhi Pinisetty, Jackie Shroff, Nassar, Shobana and Rukmini Vijayakumar in supporting roles. The narrative follows the quest of an 8th-century warrior who seeks revenge after witnessing the unlawful punishment administered to his father, a good-hearted warrior in his kingdom, by the jealous ruler.

The film was the result of a complex development process, starting with the director's idea of directing and co-producing Sultan: The Warrior with Eros International in 2007, which was to feature Rajinikanth as an animated character. After cancelling the project due to lack of financial support, Soundarya and Eros turned their attention to producing Rana, which was to be a live-action historical fiction film directed by Ravikumar starring Rajinikanth and Padukone. However, the project was put on hold after Rajinikanth fell ill and uncertainty remained whether Rana would resume. In the meantime, producer Dr. J. Murali Manohar felt impressed by Soundarya's draft work on Sultan and persuaded her to materialise her directorial ambitions with Kochadaiiyaan, featuring a plot which leads itself up to the events of Rana, which was later deciphered as a sequel script to Kochadaiiyaan. The team agreed and completed filming in two years with Centroid Motion Capture at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom using motion capture technology, after which animation work and post-production ensued in the United States, Hong Kong, and China for a year. Music for the film was composed by A. R. Rahman and was performed by the London Session Orchestra. Rahman had been working with Kevin Lima for the later shelved film Bollywood Superstar Monkey and was inspired to bring motion capture technology to Indian cinema, hence he was also at the forefront in the film's development.

Kochadaiiyaan was promoted as "a tribute to the centennial of Indian cinema" and released worldwide in 3D and for traditional viewing on 23 May 2014 in Tamil and five additional languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi. Overall, the film received a mixed critical response worldwide, wherein critics drew comparisons to other films that have used motion capture technology, notably Avatar (2009), and noted general discrepancies in the animation. Other aspects of the film, including performances, background score, and screenplay, received acclaim. The film had a large opening in Tamil Nadu and across the world, while a less enthusiastic reception was seen in other parts of India. Though the film fared well in Tamil, it performed poorly in other parts of India, including Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The film eventually bombed at the box office leaving distributors in huge losses and producers in financial tangle.