DHAKA: ‘The Expendables 3’ has leaked online three weeks ahead of the film’s theatrical release August 15.

Variety reports the latest sequel starring virtually every big action star from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone to Wesley Snipes and Jason Statham has been illegally downloaded over 189,000 times in 24 hours.

According to TorrentFreak, people have been downloading a high quality version of the film through file distribution system BitTorrent, reports businessinsider.com.

While its unknown where the leak started, TorrentFreak reports one of earliest copies that is making the rounds is one from a user known as Drarbg.

The user is reportedly a group of people who uploads a lot of video files online and often.

Since 6:00am this morning, the user has uploaded 28 videos on file-sharing site Pirate Bay including recent episodes of ‘The Colbert Report’, ‘Big Brother’, and Fox’s new show ‘Gang Related’.

This obviously isn’t good news for the film’s distributor Lionsgate. The film has been tracking a $25 million opening weekend, according to BoxOffice.com.

‘The Expendables 2’ debuted to slightly more — $28.6 million — summer 2012.

It’s worth noting that the first sequel didn’t perform as strongly as the original stateside.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the first and second film’s performances.

BDST: 1627 HRS, JUL 26, 2014