C’mon Hollywood #203

…Wolverine leaked…who cares?!
by Sturdy

Last week, it was revealed that an early, unfinished print of WOLVERINE was leaked online to various file-sharing networks. The news made national headlines, not only on movie websites, but on other news sites such as CNN and USA Today. Some news outlets began to speculate that this security breach might have an impact on WOLVERINE’s overall box-office take. What really pisses me off about the whole situation is that if Wolvie doesn’t open huge ($90+ million), you know the first thing said will be that the leak killed the box-office. The film may be a gigantic turd (I desperately hope not), but that won’t matter; Fox and the media will blame the web leak

This “leak” will have zero impact on WOLVERINE’s success. However, do you know what will have an impact on the film’s success? The quality of the film. Does anyone think that if the DARK KNIGHT had been leaked online a month before it came out that it wouldn’t still be the second highest grossing movie of all time? No, it would be just as successful and we’d still be gushing ourselves over it. People will go see a good movie, especially if it’s a summer blockbuster.

Wasn’t this film online about six months before it came out?

Now everyone that has anything to do with making a film may want to take a seat for this, because I’m about to lay something on you. No matter what you do, or how hard you try, no one is going to stop someone from seeing your movie for free. Whether they’re downloading the movie off the internet or sneaking into a theater, if you want to see a film for free, you can. In fact, it’s not really that difficult. People make livings off of eating for free, seeing movies for free isn’t that much of a challenge. Those cheapskates are not going to impact your box-office tally. Because chances are good that if they couldn’t see it for free, they wouldn’t see it at all.

If it’s good enough, people will go see it.

One of the things that’s ironic about this story is that even though 99% of the web has denounced the leak and refused to review it, one of the very few reviews of the film was posted over at “Fox 411”. Yes, that’s correct. The reviewer got fired for it, but it’s ironic that one of Fox’s own offshoots was actually responsible for one of the few reviews. Also, isn’t it fitting that one of the bigger instances of piracy is really solely the responsibility of a studio (the print came from them somehow, as did the most-read review) and that studio happened to be Fox?

On a related note; I really hope they do something cool with Deadpool.

I will say that even though I don’t believe a movie leaking on the web has any effect on the box-office numbers, that doesn’t mean I don’t think the people that leaked it shouldn’t be prosecuted. The fact remains that they stole something that wasn’t theirs and gave it away to a lot of people. I don’t care too much about the studio execs, but there’s a lot of hard working, below the line people that deserve better than that. I don’t condone the action, but I think Hollywood and the media is making too much out of it. The film leaked online, who cares?