The devil wears it, the truth: pirated releases topped the Russian distribution for the first time in two years

At the top of the box office, according to the EAIS, at the end of the week was the short film "Farewell", with which two Hollywood hits are currently being shown as part of the pre-screening service. In a week, she earned about 65 million rubles and surpassed legal releases in fees. The last time something like this happened was in 2024, when an "Inconspicuous Story" appeared at the top of the chart. The films "Deadpool and Wolverine" and "Alien: Romulus" were shown with her. How the pre—screening scheme works, how much Russian cinemas have earned from shadow rentals in four years and what this could threaten companies - in the Izvestia material.

Why have pirated releases become rental leaders again?

The most successful release of last weekend was Mikhail Mikots' short film "Farewell". He earned about 54 million rubles and led the rental. The short film also held the lead during the week from May 14 to May 20, when it had a little more than 66 million rubles on its account (only by the evening of May 20, with a difference of only a few tens of millions, it lost to Kommersant with Sasha Petrov). This is evidenced by the data of the EAIS. This is the first such case in the last two years.

The nine-minute tape hides major Hollywood releases that are not officially shown in Russia. We are talking about the sequel to the cult film "The Devil Wears Prada" starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway and the fantasy thriller "The End of the World Project" starring Ryan Gosling.

A still from the movie "The Devil wears Prada 2"

Photo: 20th Century Studios

Currently, both films can be viewed in 43 cinemas in Moscow, including the Cinema Star, Mirage Cinema and Kinomax chains.

At the same time, in some cinemas, "The Devil wears Prada 2" is shown in combination with other short films — the three-minute "Edge of Inspiration" by the same Mikhail Mikots and the 15-minute film "Decide on" directed by Dmitry Kupov. And in the cinema "Lord" on Michurinsky Prospekt, the tape goes under the name "Stop".

For the first time, the pirates broke through the first line of the box office on the last weekend of June 2024 with the short film "One Minute". Director Yevgeny Shevchenko shot it back in 2020, however, according to the EAIS, his first collections appeared only in September 2023 — almost 30 million rubles. Then, paired with a short meter, the cartoon "Elementary" was shown.

And already in June 2024, the short film became the leader of the Russian distribution and held this position for two weeks. The comedy thriller of domestic production hid the unofficial rental of the sequel to the Disney animated film "Puzzle". In the shadow box office, he collected about 177 million rubles. This was the first such case in a Russian box office.

A frame from the cartoon "Elementary"

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

In March 2026, Minutochku returned to cinemas and added another 10 million rubles to the box office. Thus, the total fees of Shevchenko's 14-minute film for the entire time of the shadow rental amounted to 457 million rubles.

According to the industry publication Cinemaplex, in 2025 the box office of shadow rental amounted to 2.8 billion rubles, and in 2024 — 4.3 billion. According to Izvestia's calculations, from March 2022 to May 2026, the officially recorded box office receipts of unofficial releases reached 7.7 billion rubles.

The highest-grossing short film in the history of the Russian box office was the six-minute "Three Good Deeds" by Marta Kotova. The total cash register of the tape approached 2 billion rubles. In fact, "Three Good Deeds" was shown in the same sessions with the films "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer", and now it is paired with the "End of the World Project". Similarly, the five-minute short film "How much does a cloud weigh?" earned more than 1 billion rubles.

How does the shadow rental scheme work and what does it threaten cinemas?

After the departure of the Hollywood major studios in March 2022, Russian cinemas quickly found a way to bring world cinema news. This is how the term "shadow rental" appeared, better known in conjunction with the phrase "pre-show service".

A shot from the movie "The End of the World Project"

Photo: Amazon MGM Studios

The viewer is sold a ticket to a short film or documentary, which has a rental certificate, and before the session a Hollywood blockbuster is shown for free. Data on such impressions is included in the EAIS database.

However, there is another scheme. Cinema owners register a new legal entity, then lease one or more halls to it and sell tickets directly to the film without a formal "trailer" in the form of a short film. Fees from such sessions are not officially displayed anywhere.

Back in 2023, Izvestia reported that cinemas were receiving copies of films from friendly CIS countries, mainly from Kazakhstan. Digital copy trading (DCP) began in May 2022. Sellers searched for potential buyers in closed Telegram chats. In addition, ads for the sale of copies of blockbusters were posted in the comments under the posts of specialized cinema channels.

Each digital copy is marked: watermarks can only be seen with the help of special equipment. However, by the fall of 2022, the craftsmen had learned how to reprogram the original DCPs for subsequent sale to Russia. Such versions are practically the same in quality as the original ones, and even technicians cannot always distinguish a licensed copy from a pirated one.

A frame from the cartoon "Puzzle 2"

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

If desired, Hollywood corporations are able to identify the source of the leak, but there has actually been only one legal precedent for all time.

— Any film has a copyright holder, and any use of the work without his consent violates the exclusive rights in one way or another. And if a corresponding licensing agreement has not been concluded with him, such screenings violate, among other things, Russian law," Evgeny Rosenblat, a lawyer at the Moscow bar association Aronov and Partners, told Izvestia. — Both administrative and criminal liability is provided for this. Given the current situation, protecting the interests of companies from unfriendly states is partially complicated. However, this does not mean that such organizations, including through their legal representatives, cannot defend their rights in Russian courts.

In May 2026, Izvestia wrote that the legal representative of Warner Bros. Pictures, which participated in the production of the film Mortal Kombat 2, had sent warnings to Russian cinemas about the inadmissibility of copyright infringement and possible consequences. The letters were sent by the Samoilov law firm, which claims to represent the interests of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Her representative Evgeny Samoilov confirmed the fact of this work to Izvestia.

And if back in early May, Passage Cinema and Greenwich Cinema in Yekaterinburg announced screenings of the film from May 14 to 17 and even started selling tickets, then later the announcement pages disappeared from cinema websites.

A shot from the movie "Mortal Kombat 2"

Photo: New Line Cinema

From a temporary anti-crisis measure, shadow rental has become a full-fledged market segment and continues to bring hundreds of millions of rubles to cinemas. However, the more visible such screenings and their box office results become, the higher the risk of legal pressure from foreign copyright holders. A story with warnings from representatives of Warner Bros. It shows that Hollywood studios are closely monitoring the Russian market and, if necessary, are ready to move from tacit disregard to real claims.