High-quality copy of Wolverine leaks online

What a mess. In a brazen act of piracy, a high-quality version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been leaked to file-sharing sites, a full month before the movie’s bow on May 1.

Although film piracy has become widespread behavior, most industry types wrote on Wednesday that they could recall no incident of this magnitude in the past. Other major movies have certainly been pirated, but not this early and this well. It’s impossible to assess the actual damage, but the movie is reportedly budgeted well past $100 million and is expected to launch the second phase of the X-Men franchise.

For fans, just as troubling was distributor 20th Century Fox’s statement about the leak. Other than hard-knuckled language about a criminal inquiry, it emphasized that the version that made it online is “incomplete and early... It was without many effects, had missing and unedited scenes and temporary sound and music." The cautionary language was an apparent bid at damage control, because already negative reviews were not difficult to find online, even though many of the largest fan sites condemned the leak. In a savvy bit of counter-insurgency, Fox also propped up rumors that the pirated files contain a virus.

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells summed up the general sentiment pretty well: “It’s bad all around for everyone.”

Related links:
Ctrl-V: Trailer Stash: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, etc.
List of the Day: The 29 Most Anticipated Movies of 2009
IMDb.com: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

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