Harry Potter and the case of the leaked screener
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Maybe Harry Potter should call Nancy Drew.
The first 36 minutes of Warner Bros.’ ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1,’ which comes out this weekend, was leaked Tuesday on the file-sharing network BitTorrent.
The footage comes from a screener of the movie, according to a post linking to the file posted on the piracy index website Pirate Bay. Burned DVDs with portions of a movie are sometimes sent out by a studio to marketing or distribution partners or for publicity purposes.
[Update, 3:02 p.m.: A Warner spokesman said that the the footage could not have come from a screener, as no screeners of the new ‘Harry Potter’ movie were created. He said the studio is investigating the leak, but has not yet determined the source.]
Although Web piracy remains a huge problem for the entertainment industry, it’s unusual that footage leaks before a movie is released. It’s much more common for the first pirated copies of a movie to hit the Internet after it’s videotaped in theaters on opening day.
The last time footage from a studio event film hit the Internet before release was last year’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine.’ An early version of that 20th Century Fox movie was leaked more than a month before it came out in theaters.
Because only the first 25% of the movie is on the Internet, it’s very unlikely to impact box-office receipts for the new ‘Potter’ film, which is tracking for a huge opening weekend that will likely top $100 million, according to pre-release surveys.
Nonetheless, Warner is taking the leak very seriously.
‘This constitutes a serious breach of copyright violation and theft of Warner Bros. property,’ a spokesman for the Burbank studio said in a statement. ‘We are working actively to restrict and/or remove copies that may be available. Also, we are vigorously investigating this matter and will prosecute those involved to the full extent of the law.’
The footage on BitTorrent contains a watermark that was placed on the DVD, according to the Pirate Bay post. Such watermarks are used by studios to identify the owners of screeners sent before a movie is released commercially on DVD in order to prosecute piracy incidents.
Of course, Warner Bros.’ anti-piracy team will likely have a much bigger problem on its hands soon, as ‘Deathly Hallows’ starts playing in a number of foreign countries, such as Australia, Germany and Russia, on Thursday.
-- Ben Fritz