Oscar Nominees Playing On Small Screens Everywhere

By Katey Rich

The blogger over at Waxy.org has compiled a stunning amount of research on a topic very important to filmmakers and exhibitors alike, especially this time of year. He (or she?) tracked the amount of time after a film's theatrical release it took for a pirated copy to become available, and also looked at how long it took screener copies, sent to Academy members, to show up on the piracy market as well. He tracked only Oscar nominees because of the screener issue. After all, these are free copies of the DVD being sent out all over the country, well in advance of the DVD release and often while the film is still in theatres.

So what did he find? Basically, even by limiting screener distribution and shortening the window between theatrical and DVD release, the studios and the MPAA haven't done that much to curb the stream of pirated movies. All but four of this year's 34 Oscar-nominated films are available online right now, and in the last five years only three films have not been available as pirated copies before Oscar night. The screeners aren't really the biggest source of copies anymore; instead they are coming from leaked American DVDs or Region 5 DVDs, often sold at the same time as the theatrical release in that country (Eastern Europe, Russia, India or Africa) in order to curb piracy. Basically the Academy members aren't the ones inadvertently aiding piracy; it's the same pirates who have always been the film industry's bugaboo.

Even more interesting is a separate chart found here, where you can track each film and exactly how long it took a pirated copy to show up. For films like Atonement and Pan's Labyrinth, released overseas before coming here, unscrupulous viewers could download copies months before they even hit theatres here. For others, though, it takes forever for a leak to show up. Across the Universe was only leaked (a screener copy) on January 3, despite coming out in theatres in mid-September and shipping screeners at the end of October. Given that Across the Universe didn't perform too well at the box office and is a fairly minor Oscar contender (one nod for costume design), maybe the sad truth is that the trick to curtailing DVD leaks is having no one all that interested in your movie to begin with.

Is trying to protect Oscar nominees from pirates a battle worth fighting? After all, studios and exhibitors are likely to lose far more money if all the teen boys interested in Transformers decide to stay home and watch that on their computers instead. I've got no data to back this up, but it seems that those interested in La Vie En Rose would be among those least likely to download a movie, or, let's be honest, even know how to download a movie. An Oscar nominee with a young, web-savvy fanbase like Juno's only comes around once in a while; for the most part, the Oscars are old-fashioned analog. The piracy battle is a tough one, and there's no clear way to fight it. Perhaps when we've put a lid on the piracy issue-- and we will-- we can find a way to protect the Oscar nominees alongside the blockbusters. But for now, I see no way of keeping any college kid with a laptop from watching No Country for Old Men in the privacy of his home.