3 Times Movies Leaked Before They Premiered

In the days before the internet, to leak a film, you had to steal the actual DVD or film that it was on and snail mail it to your source. Nowadays, award-winning films are all digital, housed on flash drives, the cloud, and portable hard drives. And that ease of accessibility has also lent itself to the dramatic rise in piracy, and boy is it ravaging the media and entertainment industry still to this day.

Most leaks come in various formats, but the most popular today are DVD screeners. They’re DVD quality versions of the films that are distributed to journalists, producers, celebrities, and other entertainment professionals to be reviewed, shown to test audiences, and used for consideration during award season.

Many different anti-piracy tactics have been employed throughout the years, including watermarking screeners with recipient names, but even still piracy prevails… -until now.

That said, let’s take a look at a few times that movies leaked before they even premiered in theaters, and then review what we think will be the future of file security.

The Hurt Locker

When movies are typically leaked, they tend to see a big dip in their box office success, approximately a 19 percent decrease on average. That wasn’t the case for the 2009 film The Hurt Locker. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the gritty Iraq War-set film follows a team of bomb technicians navigating modern-day Iraq, trying to keep cities safe as they disarm IEDs.

The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 but didn’t reach stateside until 2009. Because of its initial release overseas, the movie wound up leaking to sharing sites 5 months before its U.S. debut. The film’s producers tried desperately to stop the leak, even going as far as to sue each of the possible “tens of thousands” of people who downloaded the movie. -They later dropped the lawsuits though.

Unfortunately, the leak proved deeply hurtful for the movie’s box office sales, only racking up $49 million worldwide, despite critical acclaim from audiences and critics and winning several Oscars. To further make things bittersweet, the film also earned Bigelow [film’s director] the distinction of being the first and currently only woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director.

It also seems as if pirates love Bigelow’s films. Her 2012 Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty, starring Jessica Chastain was leaked as well.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Hailed as one of the first high-profile piracy cases, the film by Gavin Hood dives into favorite X-Men member Wolverine’s backstory and how he got his infamous powers. Wolverine’s origin film was supposed to kick off a series of X-Men prequel films, but thanks to many issues with the film’s production, including the script’s late completion, studio-director tension, and filming schedules, expanding the project was later abandoned.

But what had the production studio on edge was that a month before the movie’s U.S. release, a DVD quality workprint of the film got leaked, and it spread like wildfire. The unfinished cut featured missing sound and music, missing effects on some scenes, and incomplete edits.

Fox, the FBI, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) tried to contain the leak, but they were too late. By the time the movie was released on May 1, 2009, Fox has estimated that it was downloaded 4.5 million times.

Despite its many stumbles, the film still brought in $158.1 million worldwide on its opening night and grossed $373.1. It’s speculated that though the movie leaked, it likely didn’t impact box office sales because it was an unfinished version that leaked.

The Revenant

The Revenant is known by many as the film that garnered enough praise to finally earn Leonardo DiCaprio his long-overdue Oscar for Best Actor. The gritty western revenge action-adventure tells the story of Hugh Glass, a fur tradesman trying to navigate the uncharted wilderness when his cohorts abandon him after believing a bear killed him.

The highly anticipated film was directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, who was still riding the high from his Oscar win for Birdman. It was slated for release on Christmas day 2015, but instead, leaked 5 days before by a California man who worked in the entertainment industry. He was later fined $1.2 million for uploading The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie online.

However, like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, despite the leak, The Revenant was still a box office success, raking in $533 million during its run.

Bonus: Game of Thrones

We know Game of Thrones isn’t a movie, but its cinematic quality presence during its 8-year run made such an impact on the television industry that we’d be foolish to leave it out. Even the immensely popular fantasy drama was a victim of leaks when despite HBO’s efforts to reduce piracy, four episodes of season 5 leaked online weeks before the season premiere. The episodes were downloaded by a total of 32 million people in its first week.

In its prime, Game of Thrones was one of the world’s most-pirated shows, with fans downloading both its previous and current seasons instead of subscribing to HBO’s streaming services. Because of this, HBO aimed to release the premiere in 170 countries simultaneously. But their efforts were unsuccessful. By the show’s series finale, season 7 alone had been downloaded more than 1 billion times.

Keep Your Files Safe with Mirada Media’s SecureMedia

Once the circulation of a leaked film begins, it’s often impossible to snuff out. Copies of the files are made, and when one torrent link gets cut, it seems another crops up. According to Denise Zavitson, founder and president of Mirada Media, each year, almost $10 million in revenue is lost through music piracy and nearly $50 billion within the film and television industry. When you couple that with leaks of sensitive data like contracts and earnings reports, the impact on revenue is that much higher.

Mirada Media offers its new solution, SecureMedia, to answer to the media and entertainment industry’s piracy problem. With the new cloud-based digital media security and governance solution, protecting movies from pirates and dishonest entertainment industry professionals is easier than ever. Artists, labels, talent agencies, actors, and studios can share sensitive documents and files with confidence, no longer fearful that their files will get prematurely released.