Notable for their rise and public demise, piracy-related brands such as Napster, LimeWire, and Megaupload are still widely recognized today, despite their shutdowns long ago.
Then there’s The Pirate Bay, a site that has endured almost 20 years of chaos yet still hasn’t fallen, largely due to the groundwork of three instantly recognizable figureheads – Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm.
Part of their remarkable story is told in the excellent Simon Klose documentary ‘TPB AFK‘ but despite that being a great film, in some respects it fell a little short. For example, the Pirate Bay co-founders were never shown in an armed shoot-out with police in Stockholm.
Admittedly, that never actually happened but in this day and age, there’s less need for facts to get in the way of a good story. Especially when that story is about another infamous torrent site, one that in spiritual terms is the closest thing India has to The Pirate Bay.
Thrill, Drama, Crime: Tamil Rockers Has it All
Tamil Rockers launched as a torrent site in 2011, offering all of the usual types of pirate booty. In common with The Pirate Bay, over the years Tamil Rockers gained a cult following, with folklore recalling the group’s humble beginnings in a Chennai shed, a great setup for any movie.
Like its Swedish counterpart, Tamil Rockers soon became enemy number one for the local movie industry and in 2015, there was even talk of movie releases being suspended to ensure the site had no content to pirate.
Since then the site has been blocked by ISPs and numerous proxies, mirrors, clones, and copycats have emerged. Police have also made many arrests, often claiming to have detained key Tamil Rockers staff.
In 2020, however, it was still one of the most popular torrent sites in the world so the next logical step for irritated entertainment companies was to make a Tamil Rockers TV series with glitz, glamor and chaotic police shoot-outs – obviously.
Tamil Rockerz – The TV Series
Headquartered in Chennai, allegedly just 15 minutes from the original Tamil Rockers shed, sits AVM Productions, the veteran movie and TV show company behind the upcoming series ‘Tamil Rockerz’.
“Tamil Rockerz deep dives into the dark side of the piracy world and unravels the industry’s constant battle against identifying the group that is involved in releasing pirated content,” AVM says.
The series will be released on streaming platform SonyLIV and promises to ask the big questions right off the bat.
The plot seems to center around Rudra, a cop struggling with an inevitably troubled past. His mission – should he choose to accept it (spoiler: he did) – is to stop the TamilRockerz piracy group from leaking an upcoming, big-budget, blockbuster movie.
A movie called ‘Singadurai’ is mentioned in the trailer but whatever the movie’s name, Rudra has just 10 days to prevent a looming disaster for the local movie industry. The rumor is that TamilRockerz, whoever they are, might be invincible.
TamilRockerz stars Arun Vijay and Vani Bhojan, who was once voted the most desirable woman on Indian TV. It will stream on SonyLIV but a firm release date is yet to be announced.
AVM Productions is clearly aware of the nature of its target audience so has presumably made peace with the 100% chance the series will appear on TamilRockers sites and thousands more like them.
