Hindu deities as superheroes? To many people, that might mean giving them a status they've long possessed.

Marking many firsts for Pixar, the studio is releasing a short around an Indian American boy, directed by an Indian American, featuring three gods and goddesses from the Hindu pantheon as super heroes. The Pixar short, Sanjay's Super Team, will play before the feature length The Good Dinosaur, which will be released in India on November 27.

Sanjay Patel's directorial debut, centres around a young boy who prefers cartoons of superheroes (as can be seen in the teaser above) to his devout father's morning prayers. One day Vishnu, Hanuman and Durga appear to him and help him out of a muddle. The gods are reportedly modelled after The Avengers.

The film was screened for the press in the US a few weeks ago, and a report in Wired says, "The (preview) clip gives a good sense of the short’s visual style, but having seen Sanjay’s Super Team in its entirety... we can tell you it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the meticulous detail or wild imagination packed into the film’s seven minutes."

Patel has been working with Pixar since 1996, starting out with A Bug's Life. He also has to his credit four books on Hindu deities with adorable illustrations of the gods. The video below is a quick flip through one of the books, The Little Book of Hindu Deities.