I didn’t get around to checking the pirate sites until an hour ago, and it’s true that several digital workprint copies and at least one DVD rip of Gavin Hood‘s Wolverine (20th Century Fox, 5.1.09) are downloadable as we speak. They all appeared earlier today; the DVD rip went up only about an hour ago. Clearly someone in the post-production loop is the culprit. I don’t know what kind of effort the big distributors put into post-production security, but it clearly hasn’t been enough.
Has anyone in an all-media press screening ever been caught trying to tape a movie? Ever? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. I’m just asking.
I haven’t looked at any of the pirated copies, but HitFlix’s Drew McWeeny has reported that he looked at “a random three minute segment from the middle of the film this afternoon when first told it was online, and there’s no timecode, no watermark…nothing. It’s a clean, perfect copy. Someone did that on purpose.”
I agree with McWeeny and Nikki Finke that it’s hateful and deplorable when this sort of thing happens, and that it’s bad all around for everyone.