The good news for the producers of The Little Death is more than 160,000 people have watched the sex comedy online in the past few days.
The bad news is that very few actually paid for it.
After being released on DVD last Friday, Josh Lawson’s directorial debut is the third most downloaded title in Australia, according to kickass torrents.
In just two days the film, which grossed $308,000 in Australia, has been downloaded more than 160,000 times.
Only Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (which opened last Thursday) and Chris Nolan’s Interstellar are more popular.
In illegal downloads The Little Death is tracking ahead of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Birdman, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Imitation Game and Gone Girl.
“It’s incredible to see this kind of demand and audience but it certainly highlights the ongoing problem we have with piracy. For a small Australian film this has even greater impact than for blockbusters," See Pictures’ Jamie Hilton, who produced with Michael Petroni and Matt Reeder, told IF today.
"Also there has been a massive spike in views of the trailer on YouTube – before the weekend it was about 90,000 and now it's at 320,000."
International sales agent LevelK sold the film, which co-stars Bojana Novakovic, Damon Herriman, Kate Mulvany, Lisa McCune, Patrick Brammall, Lachy Hulme and Lawson, to a raft of territories including the US, the UK, Korea, France, Spain, Hungry, Poland, Taiwan, Switzerland, Denmark and Brazil. It’s next due to open in Germany in March.