Chennai : Within few days of facing the issue of unauthorized release of the teaser of upcoming Tamil movie titled ‘Puli’, a Vijay starer mega budget movie, in which a Junior Technician of the Post Production Studio owned by Director Priyadarshan, was arrested by Chennai Police. Another issue of Piracy involving the same studio has cropped up.
This time it is related to Piracy issue of Malayalam movie Premam, a Blockbuster by Actor Nivin Pauly, which is running in theaters with excellent reviews. As the pirated version of the movie is widely available in Internet and it is understood that the Producer was able to identify the possible area of leakage based on the water marking available in the pirated version of the movie.
According to the producers of the movie, the copy of Premam could have been leaked either from Censor Board or from the Post production Studio.
Responding to allegations that the copy of the movie was leaked from a studio owned by him, renowned filmmaker Priyadarshan had said that the version of Premam available on the Internet bore the watermark of censor copy. Following Priyadarshan’s statement, police inspected the Thiruvananthapuram office of the Censor Board on Sunday.
Piracy issue of Malayalam movie Premam was triggered when its producer Anwar Rasheed lodged a complaint with the anti-piracy cell of Kerala Police, stating that copies of the blockbuster were available on the Internet.
While Rasheed did not name anyone in his complaint, he said he would give evidence to the anti piracy cell on Monday.
The Censor copies had been given to studios in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai, where post production work of Premam was held.
After the piracy row surfaced, Kerala Film Exhibitors’ Association president Liberty Basheer alleged that the movie’s copies were leaked from studios owned by directors Priyadarshan and B Unnikrishnan and demanded that the directors be questioned.
Priyadarshan replied that if the CD was leaked from the mixing studio, it would have the watermark of mixing copy and not of the Censor copy. He also ruled out chances of the movie’s copy being leaked from the dubbing studio.
The director added that censor board chairman Pahlaj Nihalani was apprised of the gravity of the situation and stringent action had been sought against those behind the act.
Reacting to the Piracy issue of Malayalam movie Premam, Nihalani told mediapersons in Mumbai that the board was seriously looking into the issue. He said he would go to Thiruvananthapuram to find whether anyone in the Censor Board office was involved in the act of piracy.
Meanwhile, the anti-piracy cell examined Vismaya Max studio in Thiruvananthapuram where post-production work of the film was completed.
The police have also decided to question professionals involved in the making of Premam. Notices would be issued to them to appear before the investigating team, sources said.
