Indian film makers take extraordinary steps to fight piracy

Uri makers conduct surgical strike on film piracy, director lauds marketing team

Those who tried to download the pirated copy of Uri: The Surgical received a fake video of the film, to check its piracy. Director Aditya Dhar reveals more about the creative strategy used by its marketing team.

The team behind the making of Vicky Kaushal-starrer Uri has launched a ‘surgical strike’ on film pirates. To check its illegal download on piracy sites, the makers of the film uploaded a fake video where only after you download the file, you realise that the video is not of the film, but is a special message against piracy.

The 3.8 GB video file opens with the film’s lead actors Vicky Kaushal and Yami Gautam planning the surgical strike. However, Kaushal’s character Major Vihaan Shergill soon breaks the fourth wall, and tells viewers that the characters have done a surgical strike on the site and their computer.

Commenting on the one-of-a-kind initiative, Uri director Aditya Dhar told indianexpress.com: “Piracy is one thing that bothers filmmakers the most. For any film, it is very damaging to see their film getting released on Torrent or Pirate Bay because there are so many people who have worked hard on it and so many things are dependent on the film doing well at the box office. Even a difference of a few crores puts a lot of pressure on the producers and the film.

So, we really wanted to do something unique. RSVP Films’ marketing team along with Trigger Happy have been coming up with some great ideas. They were the ones who came up with this idea that we let people download the entire film and once they play it, the video will give the message – ‘do not pirate Uri, or any film for that matter’. So that thing was really cool, and hats off to the marketing team.”

Uri released on January 11 and its collections have been steady at the box office thanks to positive word of mouth. The film has already grossed Rs 50 crore in five days and given current trends, is expected to maintain high collections in the coming days too.

Given the response to the film, many tried to take the easy route and downloaded the pirated version. But instead of the 2.5-hour-long film, what they got instead was a specially shot and edited video.

“Surgical strikes 0400 hours pe start hogi. Unki army ko pata bhi nahin chalega ki kya hua (The surgical strikes will start at 0400. Their army will not know what happened),” Yami Gautam’s character says.

That’s when Kaushal’s character Major Vihaan stands up, turns to the viewers, and says “Theek usi tarah, jaise iss waqt hum aapke screen mein ghus gaye hain. Aur aapko pata bhi nahin chala. (Exactly the manner in which we have got into your screens. And you never found out.)”

Dhar also said his team was getting appreciation for its attempt to discourage piracy.

“The comments have been very encouraging. There have been few comments which said that ‘we downloaded it but realised that we made a mistake and shouldn’t have done it.’ So, thank you so much! That made us feel really nice!” Dhar said.