Proves piracy, and even swine flu for that matter, doesn’t hurt a good movie,
Last month a workprint of “X-Men:Origins: Wolverine” leaked to BitTorrent, and many in the movie industry worried that it would harm ticket sales, a fear compounded by the current economic downturn and the spread of swine flu.
Those concerns were unwarranted with news that the movie raked in an estimated $87 million in ticket sales this past opening weekend.
How it stacks up to other X-Men movies:
- X-Men (2000) – $54 million
- X2: X-Men United (2003) – $86 million
- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) – $102 million
Many, myself included, watched the workprint copy, but knew its lack of special effects and visible tether lines would still make watching it in the theaters necessary to see the finished product 20th Century Fox insisted it wasn’t.
“I started watching it online but didn’t finish because it didn’t have any of the special effects,” said theatergoer Jason Nguyen outside of the AMC Burbank 16 before a Friday show. “It seemed like something you would just watch on the DVD after seeing the real movie. I just didn’t think watching that would compare to watching the finished one with all the special effects.”
Another point to be made is that many so-called pirates will still pay to see a good movie despite having illegally downloaded a copy. “The Dark Knight” was the most pirated movie of all time, yet still managed to rake in more than $1 billion worldwide.
So much for all piracy doom and gloom the MPAA insists file-sharing is responsible for.
@Mels
I agree…but the point is that its not the end of the world that the MPAA would have you believe it is. It keeps using the piracy rationale to push for legislation mandating everything from data caps to packet sniffing when the figures prove it’s still making money hand over fist.
Proof? I hate to see ZP turn into a spin zone. Instead of trying to spin stories about Piracy there need to be talk about how to improve relations between artists and “pirates”. After all its still called “piracy”!
I think the movie would have certainly made more money for the people who invested in the film if it was not for some idiot who leaked a very bad work in progress version. Stealing that bad version and the leaking it out to the internet was bad for everyone. The consumer, it ruined the movie for many fans because it was a crappy version so if it was watched first the final version had all the surprise and freshness ripped away, the investors lose out because some people watched the leaked copy and figured the movie would still be crap when released and P2P: P2P loses out because this stealing and leaking of a high profile movie brings unwanted heat to people who just want to share content that has went way beyond what some feel is a legit claim on the copyright laws.
STOP THIS SPIN PLEASE. No offense to the writer but thee Wolverine leak was unethical and NOT cool. It surely lost money for the investors and they deserve to make all the money they can on new work. “Cam” movies are not cool and this type of “piracy” in general is not what the copyright war is about. This type of stealing is unethical and a crime. I hope they catch whoever leaked this work.
How many people do you really think would watch it online rather than the theater. The only people I know that would of watched the leaked version are my Chinese friends, and they simply don’t have the money to go to the theaters. So few people even hear about these stories. The effect I’m sure was negligible, go on the street and ask them if they saw the leaked version, you will probably only get 1 out of 1000.
Are you kidding me? I defy you to find one person who was looking forward to seeing the movie and then, because of the workprint release, did not go see it anyway.
Piracy *increases* sales of good material. This has been shown time and time again. Yes, I know that it is a difficult concept to get your head around, but it is an unarguable statistical fact.
Honestly, that movie, in some parts, had better effects than the final product. All the good parts in the movie, happened in the trailers. I watched the leaked version, and went to the theaters hoping it would be much better than the piece of crap I just watched. Turns out I was wrong. It was pretty much the same thing. But I don’t regret spending money on the movie. It was worth it.
Sure it was unethical, devious, and ‘NOT COOL’, but seeing that early version made me want to see it more.
Surely no matter how much money it makes, it would have made more if not for the evil pirates?
But how do you know for sure?
so everyone has sth from it
I would say your concepts of “proof” and “a good movie” could really do with a little closer examination here. The success of one multi-million dollar Hollywood movie with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign to back it up, does not “prove” anything.
I would say that you need to consider that your opinion is not fact. Many people, including myself, liked the flick and think it was pretty good. You can disagree, but that’s just you, not objective reality.
As far as proof goes, this is pretty solid proof that the workprint release didn’t really affect ticket sales, as we knew it would not and as the studios said it would. It sold very well, despite the pirated copy being out there. QED.