Mumbai, March 26 (IANS) No movie that has some element to appeal to the audience will be a flop if piracy can be curbed, says noted filmmaker Yash Chopra.

'Pirates take away a great chunk of money that would otherwise have gone to the box office,' said Chopra while addressing the Ficci-Frames 2008 global convention on business of entertainment in Mumbai Tuesday.

Chopra, who chairs the entertainment committee of Ficci, said: 'The film industry has taken some innovative steps, like releasing movies with the maximum number of prints, covering the maximum number of places, to pre-empt the pirates, but they still do operate because the industry does not have the legal authority to book them.'

Chopra, famous for Bollywood hits like 'Kabhi Kabhie', 'Deewaar' and 'Veer-Zaara', said unless everybody concerned worked in coordination, the menace of piracy would remain, though probably it would be lessened due to the steps the industry had taken on its own.

At the same session of the forum, citing the example of hit movie 'Jab We Met', Sony Entertainment CEO Kunal Dasgupta said that one week after the movie was released in theatres, Moser Baer - which had the home video rights - took a daring step to release the DVDs.

'Contrary to the fear expressed in certain market circles, the DVD release of the movie did not affect its box-office returns at all. The step not only pipped the pirates to the post, Moser Baer also managed to sell eight million DVDs in two weeks,' Dasgupta disclosed.

He said the industry still required to adopt many more innovative steps to meet the challenges of effective distribution of entertainment content and at the same time get the right content price.