Love in the time of piracy: Here’s why Premam producer Anwar Rasheed is in hunt down mode

When a super hit film is pushed to the centre of a row, it is quite natural that the whole of Kerala sits up and debates on the various aspects that have given shape to the controversy. With Premam, the Alphonse Puthran opus, this is what has been happening.  Forget ballot box battles and political sleaze, film piracy is the new topic of God Zone Kerala.

Malayalam filmdom, like counterparts elsewhere, has always been battling the issue of piracy. Even as corrective measures get launched from time to time, peddlers of mischief have gone about finding new avenues for grabbing fresh copies of just-released flicks and launching them onto internet space.

This phenomenon has been continuing unabated, proving irksome to producers who have pumped in big budget sums in their making. Equally irked are theatre owners who see footfalls diminishing with the films surfacing on the internet.

Premam (Love), which tells the tale of three stages of love the protagonist sails through, triggered a row with a copy of the flick doing the rounds on the world wide web even as the film was still running in theatres.

The issue sparked the undesirable, and it turned out to be a case of lost love between the producer Anwar Rasheed and the film makers’ fraternity.

With the film makers’ associations not uttering a word or seeking action, Rasheed preferred to fight it solo, and tendered his resignation from film producers’ organizations.

As days went by, several actors and directors started extending their support to Rasheed and the Premam crew. The social media too went abuzz with many users churning out theories and action plans on how to end piracy.

The movie that proved to be a hit for its freshness and fine elements of direction continued to rake in the moolah, even as Rasheed launched his battle against piracy.

Following his complaint, the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala Police kickstarted an investigation on how the copy – that too, a censor copy –  of the film got online.

Meanwhile, the film buffs who swear by Malayalam cinema from around the world got into the act of churning out new stories on how Premam was pirated.

Some of them, and also the exhibitors, dropped hints, which pointed fingers at directors Priyadarshan and B Unnikrishnan, whose studios were chosen by the makers for the film’s post production works in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai.

Priyadarshan quickly switched over to defensive mode stating that the allegation was baseless as the leaked copy had the watermark of the censor copy and not the watermark of the mixing copy.

This was followed up by an inspection by the anti-piracy sleuths at the Thiruvananthapuram office of the Censor Board this Sunday. It is being said that the censor copies had been given to studios in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai, where post production work of Premam was done.

Unnikrishnan also came out in the open stating that Anwar Rasheed has all his support as he went ahead fighting the issue.

Priyadarshan also took the matter to Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani, who promised investigation from their side. The anti-piracy cops, in the meantime, are set to probe the involvement of professionals who were part of the making of Premam.

The issue is raging. Premam, already a hit, is being talked about for a reason much different from its so-called cinematic excellence. The anti-piracy battle has indeed got a shot in the arm in the form of Premam.

The film that has made young Nivin Pauly close to being a superstar, has itself gained stardom for its efforts at putting up a strong resistance to piracy, by being a victim.

Producer Anwar Rasheed, who had earlier directed box office tsunamis such as Rajamanikyam, Chota Mumbai, and Ustad Hotel, is the new knight set to save Malayalam cinema from the vendors of doom.

Also read

10 best films from the golden age of Malayalam cinema

Malayalam movie stars promise to make politics action-packed and entertaining

Here’s why Malayalam movie stars are donning the hats of farmers, not on screen, but in real life