Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; April 28, 2017)

Last night, Twitter was flooded with reports that the climax scene of S S Rajamouli’s much anticipated Baahubali 2 had been leaked following the film’s Dubai premiere. But when mid-day asked producer Shobu Yarlagadda about the speculation, he responded with a “what premiere?”. “So far, the film has only been screened for the Censor Boards of the countries it is releasing in,” Yarlagadda tells mid-day.

Following the leak of the film’s trailer ahead of its scheduled hour last month, the team has been vigilant to prevent further revelations. Rajkummar Akella, who is heading the Anti Piracy cell of the Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce, said, “The biggest challenge right now is to prevent piracy at the source. Notices have been served to all potential pirates on Monday. Usually, you can track the person uploading pirated content on the Internet via calling services.”

Akella admits that keeping an eye on all elements becomes difficult when the film is as elaborate as this one. “We are tracking the film at every point of transfer between India and local distributors. The local distributors too are micromanaging with theater owners. Spam calls are being monitored.”

The team is so vigilant that Yarlagadda asserts any breach can be tackled with within 30 minutes. “The film is releasing in over 8500 screens worldwide. The anti-piracy cell, the film’s team and Dharma Productions (co-producers) are closely watching every development online in assigned zones. In multi-lingual films, video and audio is recorded separately. In the process of mixing, content is transferred across various platforms and this increases the chances of a leak.”