The makers of Dallas Buyers Club, an Oscar-nominated film starring Matthew McConaughey, have filed a lawsuit (PDF) against 31 anonymous Internet users who allegedly downloaded the movie illegally.

The suit is striking because it's one of a very few instances where the owners of a critically acclaimed film have pursued Internet downloaders in court. While thousands of movie downloaders have been targeted in recent years, most of the targets have been sued over pornographic movies.

Many of the porn cases settle, but suing over more mainstream content hasn't been a clearly profitable enterprise in the past, in part because more of the accused are willing to fight back. Starting in 2010, makers of The Hurt Locker sued thousands of alleged downloaders.

This new lawsuit was filed by Dallas Buyers Club LLC, and Variety notes that one of the movie's investors is Voltage Pictures—the same studio that made The Hurt Locker and chose to pursue litigation over BitTorrent piracy of that movie. The lawsuit was filed on Monday, Feb. 3, which was one day before Dallas Buyers Club's DVD release date. All of the alleged pirates in this case shared the movie via BitTorrent while it was only available legally in theaters.

It's unclear if the studio is planning more lawsuits. This first case was filed in the Southern District of Texas, and the complaint states that "geolocation technology" was used to trace the 31 IP addresses in question to places within that judicial district.