Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The worst for 'PASSION' has begun in India and elsewhere in Asia

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Topic: The worst for 'PASSION' has begun in India and elsewhere in Asia – piracy

Kamakshipalya Dhananjay
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 190
From: Bangalore, India
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 03-11-2004 01:46 AM

The pirated DVDs for this film have finally hit the streets everywhere in India. And across Asia too. What price they are selling for ?
At about 2 dollars,10 cents outright (Rupees 100). They are also available for rental for as little as 40 cents (Rupees 15).

To find out more about this, I got one for myself and here is what this DVD is about :
1. The entire film is shot using a camcorder inside a movie theatre. Some shots of people moving in and finding their seats too are there.
2. The print itself has English subtitles on it.
3. The DVD cover looks exactly like those that were photographed by BBC at streets in Mexico. Two days ago BBC ran a story about pirated DVDs of this film selling very fast in Mexico.
4. The DVDs which are selling in India have subtitles in ENGLISH (in addition to that on the screen which cannot be, obviously, turned off), MALAY, THAI, CHINESE 1 and CHINESE 2. So, it is a safe bet that copies of these DVDs must have also widely circulated in MALAYSIA, THAILAND and of course, CHINA.
I then called up ICON office at Los Angeles. There is nobody there to handle issues such as these and however, I left a message in their mailbox.

That is it. In fact, nobody in India even knows who the distributor is for India. And while I was just told the name of the person by ICON's office in London, I find it impossible to locate the contact information for one Mr.Deepak Nair, the person who has obtained theatrical distribution rights for India. The distributors association in Bangalore knows nobody by that name. And also, distributor associations in some other cities too are not aware of this person or his contact information. And so, while we hunt for this information, anybody here can offer some clue or help ?

This is it. This movie has not released anywhere in Asia and with these developments, God alone knows what is in store for this film.

I had strong expectations that PASSION could rewrite record books in India ! It could have become the highest grossing foreign film ever and also, it could have done such business here that anybody who would guess numbers, however wildly, would have fell short of the final tally.

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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.

Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 03-11-2004 02:17 AM

There are plenty of piracy threads this should have been mentioned in. No need for yet another "Passion" thread.

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