Two men have been arrested in Britain on suspicion of leaking action film Expendables 3 online before its official release, costing the studio millions of pounds.

The Hollywood film, which stars Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, illegally appeared on websites in July, a month before it was due to hit the big screen.

City of London Police said the leaked film was viewed hundreds of thousands of times online.

Detectives from the police intellectual property crime unit (PIPCU) arrested a 36-year-old man at his home in the Wirral and a 33-year-old man at his home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

City of London Police said the pair are believed to have stolen the film from a cloud-based system before uploading it on to the internet. They said the leak had a "significant financial impact" on film-makers Lionsgate and Millennium Films.