Producer Prakash Veer’s latest venture, The Devil, starring Darshan, has entered its second week, raking up a gross of over 35 crores. On the surface, it seems like another commercial success, but behind the scenes, the film has been fighting a far bigger battle: piracy.

“Piracy has become the devil itself. Till today, we have removed around 10,500 piracy links. From what I hear, this is the highest in India. We had prepared to face piracy, but not at this volume. The impact of piracy on single screens has been massive. These are the audiences who truly connect with the film. I had an incident in Tiptur where a bus was screening The Devil. We complained, but the bus owner said it was a cleaner’s mistake. These small things, unnoticed, are exactly what is killing cinema.”

For Prakash, the stakes are deeply personal. “As a producer, all I want to say to the fan wars, to people making statements online, this is not healthy for the film, nor the industry. The negativity and conflicts don’t just affect the film; they impact the producer, daily wage workers, technicians, and everyone who survives on cinema. When I was producing The Devil, I worked closely among these wage workers, and I came to understand that every piracy link, every negative post, is hitting them directly.”

While Prakash faces piracy issues day in and day out, the film also struggled with censorship hurdles, with 33 cuts requiring approval from a revised committee in Mumbai, he revealed. “The censor process got stuck, creating doubts around the release on December 11. Multiple calls came in asking if the film would even make it to theatres. And once we released, the negativity didn’t stop. We need to fight for good scripts, for meaningful cinema, yet nobody seems to see the bigger picture. Look at the bandwidth of our language. We are still asking people to save Kannada. But when a film struggles, the burden falls on us, on the small workers, on theatre owners.”

Satellite and digital rights remain undervalued for Kannada films, while fan wars rage online with little accountability. “It is time we realise individual responsibility. We must understand what cinema really supports: the daily wage worker, our culture, and our language. Piracy, negativity, and fan wars kill livelihoods. We fight to keep Kannada cinema alive, and that fight has to be recognised and supported by everyone.”