Jyotika’s Ponmagal Vandhal, the first big Tamil film to release directly on an online streaming platform, has been leaked on the notorious film piracy website tamilrockers.com minutes before its worldwide release. Ponmagal Vandhal is now available for free download from this site even while it premiered on Amazon Prime Video after 12.00 midnight IST on Friday.
According to the time of upload on Tamil Rocker’s site, the film was made available at 11.16 pm on Thursday. The Twitter handle of Amazon Prime Video India first tweeted the film’s release at 12.01 am on Friday.
The film industry continues to grapple with piracy, one of the major problems plaguing the industry. Leaking of films or even trailers before the official release has become a regular affair in the Tamil film industry. Producers and film production teams have time and again requested fans to support the industry by watching films in theatres and not download them from such sites that promote piracy.
Ponmagal Vandhal, starring Jyotika in the lead, is a courtroom crime drama directed by debutant JJ Fredrick and produced by Suriya’s 2D Entertainment and Rajsekar Karpoorasundarapandian. The films also stars Bhagyaraj, Parthiban, Vinodhini and Pratap Pothen in important roles.
Jyotika plays Venba, a lawyer who reopens a case of child rape and murder that took place 15 years ago, arguing for the sake of the woman whom she believes has been wrongly implicated. Bhagyaraj plays her father while Parthiban is the lawyer who argues against Venba’s case.
Read our review here:
Ponmagal Vandhal faced dissent from the state theatre owners’ association which was dead set against the film releasing directly on a streaming platform. While the theatre owners argued that such a move would spell the death knell for the long-standing culture of watching movies in a theatre, the producers and several others expressed that it was pertinent to keep up with changing times for the sake of survival and insisted that theatres would never lose their charm among audiences and would surely make a comeback post the lockdown.