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Twitter'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' leaks to the Web
Unfortunately, this isn't an April Fool's Day joke: A full print of the upcoming superhero flick "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" has appeared online. (We won't say where -- if you're savvy, we're sure you can find it.)
Worse, we're not talking the sort of blurry, cellphone-quality bootleg normally associated with leaked movies. Drew McWeeny over at HitFix describes it as "a near-finished DVD quality rip, marred only by a few unfinished FX shots." Other commenters who viewed the leaked movie said the CGI was either unfinished or totally absent.
That's bad news for 20th Century Fox, which is hoping "Wolverine" can resurrect its "X-Men" franchise after a relatively disappointing showing by "X-Men: The Last Stand." No matter how unfinished, leaked films hurt box office both directly (obviously, someone who's seen the movie for free may not pay ten bucks for a ticket at the theater) and indirectly (those who see it aren't seeing a theatrical cut, so their word of mouth may prevent others from buying tickets).
Don't expect Fox's lawyers to win this round, either. It's one thing to ask a site to take down leaked clips; it's another to try and fight against the evolving slipperiness of the torrent communities. Just ask all those video-game developers whose pirated products have been played free for years.
Before you go rushing off to HitFix (or Ain't It Cool News or CinemaBlend or the movie news site of your choice), be warned: While the sites themselves are taking a strong stance against leaking details, commenters in several places aren't being nearly as restrained. Spoilers do abound.
What do you think? Will this hurt the franchise? Can the studio do anything to prevent future leaks?
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
How is this news? Isn't EVERY movie leaked before it hits theaters? I've seen MANY movies before they are released - how is this breaking news!???
I watched the bootleg and I thought that it was by far the best Marvel Movie to date. If you had plans on seeing this when it was released then don't watch it. It is unfinished especially the CGI effects "An arrow that points to hand with the caption (NAILS GROW) is one example. The story is not well edited either. If you know the comics then you can keep up. If not then don't watch it and ruin a great action movie for yourself.
Also the movie is really violent so I would say PG-13 is going to be the rating. There is way too much stabbing and cutting in my opinion for small children.
While Definitely hurt Fox, but come'on this movie could've been a flop they always have a change of losing money on these productions. Studio's can only do so much against this short of having crazy security and a we'll sue - your pants off if you leak this set of policy's. And as you said you can't stop the multimedia pirates out there, they always find a way.
The movie should be rated R. This is no kids movie. If you really know Wolverine it could be a NC-17 movie.
The studios need to start internal investigations into how these leaks occur. People need to be fired and arrested within the companies themselves if they want this stuff to stop. It's one thing to go after the camcorder crowd, but they have nothing to do with leaking a DVD-quality print of an unreleased film. That's an inside job.
Has anyone considered it is possible FOX leaked it on purpose to create contreovery? They might be afraid it will be a box office flop and by leaking a unfinished movie, it could actually gain some interest in seeing the completed one.
Dean
Little money is lost in pirated games. I know zero people whom have cracked xboxes and the ps3 is still fort knox. Real PC gamers usually have a few titles they play. And they are legit copies, no-one exposes several grand of hardware to attack, or more significantly no-one would jeopardize their EA account by running a bootleg. Downloaded games are not lost sales because they are not purchases that would have been made. As for movies, five dollar theaters sell out, campus cinemas which are still two or three bucks are always sold out, 13 dollar seats with ten dollar popcorn are empty because the owners want it that way so they can whine for subsidies or use tax writeoffs, if they wanted to make money they would sell out the house with 5dollar seats and 5dollar pop/corn combos, and bring back 2.50 teusdays, and have network nights, ie BG finale, Lost marathons, etc, maybe have annual memberships for 1-200, 500family etc, have 1 theater at a multiplex set up with a liquor license and ppv! Actually beer and big screen ppv playoffs could subsidize the entire cinema, Disney matinees could be free!! ps the nerds that download this will see it at the theater and buy the bluray so no losses there. thanks have a nice day yours Kristaps
I expect this will not hurt ticket sales much. The version online is very rough and lacks most of the special effects.
I mean if you saw a rough cut of Star Wars episode 4 without the special effects - you'd still go see it at the theatre.
I heard it was leaked by the head so he'd have an excuse when it flopped.