Mickey Virus

Plot

When two Hackers are murdered in Delhi, Delhi Police suspect that case revolves around hacking, they begin their search to find a computer hacker who can help them crack this case. The head of the police team ACP Siddhanth (Manish Choudhary) accompanied by Inspector Bhalla (Varun Badola), stumbles across Mickey Arora (Manish Paul), a lazy but smart hacker who runs a grocery store in day time and creates viruses for anti virus companies in the night along with his friends tomboy Chutney (Puja Gupta), Floppy, Pancho and Professor (Nitesh Pandey) who always helps him out in all odd jobs. ACP Siddhanth hires him to hack down the website of a group of cyber criminals known as Bhram Gang. Meanwhile, Mickey falls in love with Kamayani (Elli Avram) an employee of Excalibur Securities. One day in her office Kamayani wrongly transferred a big amount from a client's account but to avoid her from being fired Mickey hacks the company's website to reverse the transaction. Only the next morning Micky came to know that he has unknowingly stolen 100 crore rupees from a Dubai based don and Kamayani has been murdered. Scared of being framed for both the crimes Mickey seeks help from his friends. In the quest to search for the real culprit Mickey traced down 100 crore rupees and finds out that ACP Siddhanth is the master mind who forced Kamayani to bluff him. Mickey calls ACP and his friends to the parking lot of Nehru Place were ACP tells him that his friends Floppy, Pancho and Professor are Bhram Gang and want to kill him for the money as they did to the two hackers and Kamayani. Surrounded by all the goons Mickey records and telecasts their confession on YouTube and in the end Inspector Bhalla along with police force arrests them all and leaves Mickey to get information about money from him and credit rolls to show few deleted scenes and audio message of Anwar Raja.

Cast

Crew

Production

The film was shot in New Delhi, including in office complex of Nehru Place. Several Bollywood biggies like Salman Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor and Karan Johar featured in a promotional video of Mickey Virus. The movie has come under the scanner of Governmental Agencies as it displays techniques of high-profile robbery which might spur reel to real life robbery incidents. Elli Avram is also one of the contestants of Bigg Boss 7. She would be inside the House of Bigg Boss, cut off from the outside world at the time of Movie Release, making it a first of its kind Bollywood Debut. Mickey Virus is made on a budget of Rs.11 crore, which includes publicity and advertising, and it was released in 1,200 screens in India. Chances are that the film will be remade in Tamil and Telugu.

Soundtrack

The Soundtrack was released on 3 October 2013 on the digital music platform iTunes. The album consists of six track with five of them composed by Hanif Shaikh and the only one of them by Faizan Hussain & Agnel Roman while Hanif Shaikh, Manoj Yadav and Arun Kumar writing the lyrics.

Marketing

Mickey Virus was promoted by Manish Paul in Bigg Boss on Colors. A promotional clip of Mickey Virus featured Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit Nene, Farah Khan, Karan Johar, Remo D'souza, Kapil Sharma, either dishing out funny one-liners or abusing Mickey. Lauren Gottlieb, Drashti Dhami, Jeetendra and Manish's TV friends Vahbbiz Dorabjee, Vivian Dsena attended the special screening of Mickey Virus.

Critical reception

Mickey Virus received positive to mixed reviews. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave it 3 out of 5 stars and stated that Mickey Virus is a well-made, engrossing thriller that should be liked by the youngsters. Madhureeta Mukherjee of Times of India gave it 3 out of 5 stars. Mohar Basu of Koimoi gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave it 2 out of 5 stars and stated that the film isn't unwatchable, but at 2 hours and 15 minutes, it certainly overstays its welcome, offering little by way of laughs or thrills. Faheem Ruhani of India Today gave it 3 out of 5 stars. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Tushar Joshi of DNA gave it 2.5 stars. Shubhra Gupta of Indian Express gave it 2 stars. Sanjukta sharma of Livemint stated that the film is dull hacker drama with a ludicrous plot. Anupama Chopra gave it 2 stars. Zee News gave it 3.5 stars. Nikhil Arora of DesiMartini gave it 2 stars.

Box office

Mickey Virus got a 15–20% opening and collected around ₹1.65 crore (US$260,000) nett on first day. It collected ₹7.15 crore (US$1.1 million) nett in its first week and it was declared flop in box office India.