Mimi director Laxman Utekar reacts to film leaking online: ‘We were stunned’

Mimi director Laxman Utekar and his team stated that they are ‘stunned’ when they learned that the movie had leaked on piracy platforms four days before its scheduled release. The movie stars Kirti Shanon was scheduled to release on July 30. However, on Monday evening, bootlegged versions of the film were made available on illegal streaming platforms.

As soon as the news spread,  producer Dinesh Vijan and actress Kirti Shanon had decided to release the film four days in advance. Within hours of the leak, Mimi was streaming on Netflix and JioCinema. In an interview, the director said, “I feel hurt because we worked hard on the film. It took us two years to make Mimi. We waited long for the theatres to open, but the situation compelled us to release it on OTT. We were satisfied with the fact that it will be watched by the audience, [no matter the medium]. After what happened on Monday, we were stunned. It makes us wonder if we could have been more careful.” “We weren’t impacted by piracy [commercially] because the film was released officially after all,” he added.