Summary:
Mumbai, Aug 17 (PTI) Films arriving on over-the-top (OTT) platforms within months of release in theatres have played an important role in curbing piracy, believes actor Arun Vijay.
Vijay, who predominantly works in Tamil cinema, said even his films have fallen prey to piracy including the 2019 superhit "Thadam".
"It (piracy) has been reduced as the window of films coming on OTT after theatrical release has been reduced to 21 to 30 days and so on.
"There are people who wait and watch it on OTT on legitimate sites and it is good in a way in stopping piracy," the 44-year-old actor told PTI in a Zoom interview.
Vijay is looking forward to the premiere of his debut web series “Tamil Rockerz”, which borrows its title from the piracy site of the same name infamous for leaking upcoming films, series, music and videos.
Directed by Arivazhagan Venkatachalam of “Eeram” fame, the upcoming thriller show follows the journey of Rudra (Vijay), a cop, who must fight against time, unruly fans, and an anonymous network of cyber pirates to secure a massively budgeted and highly anticipated movie, from the notorious piracy group.
The eight-episode fictional series, penned by Manoj Kumar Kalaivanan, is backed by AVM Productions.
Through a well-researched series like “Tamil Rockerz”, Vijay said the team"s aim is to make the audience realise the effort and money that goes behind making a movie.
“Piracy has affected all of us...
The whole industry across languages, irrespective of it being a big or small film...
We all wait for a huge response from the audience in theatres and suddenly your film is being telecast on a pirated site.
It is disheartening.
"We are trying to tell people that so much hard work and money is put into entertaining people and due respect must be given to filmmakers and creators by watching films on legitimate sites and theatres,” he added.
Vijay said his character Rudra is a person who doesn’t like watching movies but it"s interesting to see how he gets involved in this case of film piracy.
"While doing this show, I learnt how this whole network works.
So much research went into this.
We are hopeful the audience will like it,” he said.
In the past, the rise of satellite TV challenged theatres and today the exhibition sector is affected by the OTT boom, he added.
“In every period there was something coming up that would stop people from coming to theatres.