It's been a wild month for Sony. First, hackers calling themselves the GOP (Guardians of Peace) shut down their offices and threatened them with blackmail. Then, as a probable result of the hacking, at least five Sony movies were leaked onto the web, all of them either still in theatres (Fury, downloaded by over 888,000 unique IP addresses in the last week) or not yet released (Annie, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, To Write Love on Her Arms). A bunch of sensitive employee information was also leaked, probably at least in part because Sony kept thousands of passwords in a folder labelled "password." Oof. Now the scuttlebutt is that North Korea might be involved somehow, possibly in retaliation to upcoming Sony comedy The Interview, in which a pair of schmucks try to assassinate Kim Jung Un. Oh... kay. Who's going to make a movie about this?
Sony, on behalf of Film Journal International, I would like to offer my condolences. Have a happy holiday, guys. If it's any consolation, this isn't the first time pirates have gotten their hands on major movies before their release dates. This new quintet of pirated pictures joins the august (or not so august) company of...
Hulk (2003)
A work print of Ang Lee's Hulk (the Eric Bana version, not the Ed Norton version) was leaked about two weeks before its release all the way back in 2003, which in terms of Internet tech might well have been the Stone Age. For some context: When Hulk was released, website The Pirate Bay, that grand poobah of online torrenting, wouldn't even launch for about another three months. Kerry Gonzalez, the person responsible for the leak, spread the file around on chat rooms. Chat rooms. God, I feel old.
The studio, Universal, claimed the piracy hurt Hulk's bottom line, and indeed it went on to be a box office flop, earning $131.1 million domestically against a production budget of $137 million. In situations like this, however, skeptics claim that the leak did less to siphon people away from theatres than the movie just not being very good. Poor word of mouth definitely hurt Hulk, which took a philosophical, action-light approach to the superhero genre that audiences members generally didn't respond to.
As for Gonzalez? He pleaded guilty to felony copyright infringement and was HULK SMASHed with six months home confinement, three years probation, and approximately $7000 in fines.
Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Within a month of each other, two of 2002's biggest movies--Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones--were being circulated on now-defunct file-sharing communities prior to their official release. Pirates got Spider-Man out a day early, while for Attack of the Clones it was approximately a week. Via CNet, the video quality for Star Wars was "inferior to a typical VCR movie," but still watchable, and with decent sound. Interestingly, a copy of the film was shown a full two months early to Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News after an insider arranged a "special screening" for him. A Lucasfilm investigation led to a former production assistant being arrested for stealing storyboard stripes, video and sound effects.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Despite heavy security at pre-release screenings, the first of The Matrix's two sequels made its way onto the Internet approximately a day before law-abiding moviegoers got a chance to see it in theatres. Turns out all the effort in the world to stop people from shooting shaky video on handheld cameras doesn't matter when someone somehow gets their hands on a high-quality widescreen version, complete with surround sound. Still, attempts to curb in-theatre recording of The Matrix Reloaded weren't fruitless--analysis of digital codes embedded in a bootleg version of the film led the FBI to two major movie bootlegging rings, which they were able to shut down days before they were planning to release illegal DVD copies of Superman Returns.
X-Men Origins - Wolverine (2009)
About a month before X-Men Origins - Wolverine (the worst-reviewed movie in the X-Men franchise, and that's saying something, because The Last Stand exists) hit theatres, a work print of the movie made its way onto the Internet. 47-year old New Yorker Gilberto Sanchez was arrested for the crime and sentenced to a year in federal prison after he bought a bootleg DVD and uploaded it to filesharing site Megaupload. Within a day, 20th Century Fox had gotten the movie taken down, but only from that one site. The file had already gotten around so much that it was impossible to shove the small, hairy, metal-clawed genie back in the bottle. So it goes. Sanchez insisted at the time of the arrest that he was a scapegoat.
The case of X-Men Origins - Wolverine is unique in the annals of movies being leaked, because it's not just that the movie wasn't out yet. It wasn't finished, at least not the copy that Sanchez shared, which was several months old by the time he bought it. Special effects weren't done. Music wasn't added. Final edits hadn't even been locked in. Prosecutors argued that the "up to millions of infringements" had an impact on the film's box office, though some experts argued that the effect was likely negligible, because the casual moviegoers who made up most of Wolverine's box office probably didn't know about the leak, and the sort of hardcore fan who would download a work print is probably planning to see the film regardless. And, hey, the film made $373 million worldwide despite, again, really terrible reviews. Without the help of a time machine and a parallel universe or two, we can't know for sure the effect X-Men Origins - Wolverine being leaked had on the film's box office. Still, as stated by US attorney Andre Birotte Jr., Sanchez's sentencing "sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates... The Justice Department will pursue and prosecute persons who seek to steal the intellectual property of this nation.”
The Expendables 3 (2014)
On June 24, 2014, nearly two months before it was set to hit theatres, a high-definition version of The Expendables 3 started winging its way around some of the less-legal corners of the Internet. By early August--this is still before people had the chance to buy a ticket and see the film in a theatre--it had reportedly already been illegally downloaded 2.1 million times. When the film came out, it vastly underperformed compared to its two predecessors, earning less than half what Expendables 2 made, which in turn made about $20 million less than the first film in the franchise. It's worth pointing out here that The Expendables 3 is the worst-reviewed film of the three, as well. But when you consider that there's a substantial overlap between The Expendables 3's target audience and people who regularly illegally download things (read: young adults), it's easy to assume that a large chunk of those who downloaded the movie might have paid to see it if the leak hadn't happened.
Lionsgate thinks so, anyway. In the months since the leak, they've brought out the legal guns, suing the anonymous individuals behind torrent sites that spread the file. A lawyer representing Millennium Film even took action against individual downloaders, vowing to "go after th[e] 10 million people" who pirated the film, which he says resulted in lost potential revenue of $250 million. As for the people who actually stole the film in the first place, the two folks allegedly responsible were arrested in England last month.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron Trailer
It's not a movie, but Disney is reportedly on the warpath after a user named "John Gazelle" uploaded the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer onto Google Drive days before the studio itself was planning to release the it on TV as a promotional tie-in with "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.." The Mouse House subpoenad Google for any of Gazelle's identifying information, including their IP address and any e-mail or physical addresses associated with their account. So far, no one has yet been officially charged.
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