New Page — Manav Parekh

DEADPOOL HACKS HOTSTAR

The challenge was to tell the Indian audiences, who were typically used to watching censored content, even in movie theatres that the Deadpool movie was on Hotstar and more importantly, it was uncensored. So I created a stunt to get the attention of the audiences. We removed the twitter display picture, the header, etc and made the Hotstar official Twitter handle look like it was hacked. ‘Co-incidentally’, this was around the same time that a group called 'Anonymous’ was hacking into famous Indian twitter accounts. Taking advantage of that public sentiment, I put out some seemingly gibberish tweets with subtle references to Deadpool that only fans would get.

Example: “You can’t stop me, FAT GANDALF!”

Soon, twitter was abuzz with individuals and press being equally surprised that Hotstar was hacked.

There were multiple articles on online publications about this. In fact, we even fooled Twitter. They acted swiftly and suspended the official Hotstar account.

Finally, once we regained control of our account, I put out a tweet that read:

“Dear Mr. Deadpool. Thank you for handing our account back to us. As agreed, we have now uploaded your movie on Hotstar, untouched.”

We also put out the following press release:

"As you know, Hotstar is home to some of the most colourful characters in the world. One of our new additions, Deadpool, went rogue and had a little too much fun with our Twitter handle. Thankfully, the good folks at Twitter India noticed the same and swung into action. The account was suspended and the tweets quickly deleted. We are delighted to announce we have now regained full control of our Twitter account and Deadpool is back where he belongs. Being Irresponsible and Unspoiled on Hotstar."