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.
Disney Feeds High School Musical 3 Mania
So of course less than six months after the Nitendo DS version has dropped, and the XBox 360 version of the High School Musical 3 interactive game, the PS2 inevitably makes its debut into stores and hopefully into the PS2 owners across the globe.
Like its predecessors, the PS2 version is under $50.
Michael Moore’s Free Movie Download Bound to Set Trends
It’s election season, and Michael “Mr. Farenheit 911, Sicko” Moore has been quite quiet lately, only to startle us out of nowhere with Slacker Uprising a documentary Moore has made available online gratis to viewers via an arrangement with interactive hosting firm Hypernia.
The film’s cost rounds to about $2 million dollars, and most likely Moore will not recoup a dime from the free dowloading delivery. Many critics are hailing this move (free web release) as unprecedented. More is hoping for some guerilla-style viewing too; CityNews reports that Moore’s
“hoping the file will be shared via email, online and in homes, and will be shown in schools, colleges, church halls and community centres, insisting he’s fine with having it freely distributed everywhere, something that would turn the stomach of most movie executives in Hollywood.”
The unanswered question now is, will other filmmakers follow suit? Will they produce million-dollar movies and distribute them for free over the internet? Some observers have actually been panning the film, in particular Ben Walters of The Guardian who (while praising Moore’s millenial movie distribution strategy) waved off Slacker Uprising as a “disappointment that will give ammunition to those who see Moore as a self-aggrandising propagandist while contributing little of substance to the present campaign”. The same sentiment was reiterated by film critic John Serba whose evaluation of the documentary was pretty much summed up in the headline: you get what you paid for.
Maybe Moore ought to try this freebie strategy with his next movie. Then we won’t assume its quackery.