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This was substantially interesting to me, especially what the Fox executive had to say...
Despite strenuous and often costly security measures aimed at preventing unfinished movies from being pirated, a work print of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman, wound up online Tuesday, a month before its scheduled May 1 release. According to published reports, the film lacked many special effects and included temporary sound effects and music. Eric Garland, head of BigChampagne, which monitors file-swapping services, told today's (Thursday) New York Times, "We've never seen a high-profile film -- a film of this budget, a tentpole movie with this box office potential -- leak in any form this early." BigChampagne estimated that the film had been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times in its first 24 hours online. Twentieth Century Fox issued a statement saying that the FBI and the MPAA were both attempting to determine how the film wound up online and vowed that "the source of the initial leak and any subsequent postings will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." The TorrentFreak website, which covers the BitTorrent scene, noted that a few minutes into the film the name of Rising Sun Pictures, an Australian visual effects company, and a March 2 date flash on the screen. "Of course Rsp would absolutely not endorse any leak and the leak could have happened before the print even reached them," the website observed. Otherwise, no security "watermarks" were spotted on the print. At least one Fox executive did not appear overly concerned about the leak. "People who are going to download and watch it on their computer were either never going to pay to see it anyway or they're the type of super-fan who was going to go 10 times in the first week," he told the Entertainment Weekly website.
Despite strenuous and often costly security measures aimed at preventing unfinished movies from being pirated, a work print of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman, wound up online Tuesday, a month before its scheduled May 1 release. According to published reports, the film lacked many special effects and included temporary sound effects and music. Eric Garland, head of BigChampagne, which monitors file-swapping services, told today's (Thursday) New York Times, "We've never seen a high-profile film -- a film of this budget, a tentpole movie with this box office potential -- leak in any form this early." BigChampagne estimated that the film had been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times in its first 24 hours online. Twentieth Century Fox issued a statement saying that the FBI and the MPAA were both attempting to determine how the film wound up online and vowed that "the source of the initial leak and any subsequent postings will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." The TorrentFreak website, which covers the BitTorrent scene, noted that a few minutes into the film the name of Rising Sun Pictures, an Australian visual effects company, and a March 2 date flash on the screen. "Of course Rsp would absolutely not endorse any leak and the leak could have happened before the print even reached them," the website observed. Otherwise, no security "watermarks" were spotted on the print. At least one Fox executive did not appear overly concerned about the leak. "People who are going to download and watch it on their computer were either never going to pay to see it anyway or they're the type of super-fan who was going to go 10 times in the first week," he told the Entertainment Weekly website.
