Movie Marketing and PR Watch: X-Men Origins: Wolverine Leak
Online Movie Marketing/Piracy
The X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie leaked online last week to measured jubilation in some circles and to dismay in others and Twentieth Century Fox is not playing with the parties involved wittingly or unwittingly, or remotely.
Roger Friedman, a seasoned journalist for the Fox News online website has parted ways with the company where he worked for a decade for posting a review of the leaked movie online. Friedman wasn’t responsible for the movie’s leaking online but by actually writing a review of the illegally-leaked (and writing a rather endorsing review), he didn’t endear himself to the irate Twentieth Century Fox. According to a statement issued by his now-former employees at Fox News,
“…Friedman’s behaviour was “reprehensible” and that it “condemned this act categorically”.
Meanwhile, the FBI is on the case. According to CNET’s Greg Sandoval, tracking down the perpetrator(s) will be elementary, my dear:
“Studios embed identification marks on prints and film copies and that’s how authorities tracked down Kerry Gonzalez. He was the New Jersey man who uploaded the superhero film Hulk to the Web weeks before its 2003 theatrical release.”
Like everyone else, Sandoval asks whether the movie’s illegal dowloading will actually have an effect on its box office performance. He points out the tremendous box office success of Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11, which as opposed to suffering on its opening weekend, pulled in $119.1 million dollars, nearly half of the money brought in by the biggest theatrical movie from that year The Passion of Christ, a few years ago.
What needs to be taken into account though, is that Fahrenheit 9/11’s base audience (college to middle-age, politically conscious) was surely not the same as the ones for X-Men Origins Wolverine (young, estrogen-powered 18-39 males (not to say politically unsconscious)). The audience for X-Men Origins are mostly web-savvy, who will more likely than not already have been exposed to the online leak. Plus the leak occured nearly five years ago, and illegal movie downloading has grown more sophisticated.