Fox on 'Wolverine' whopper: No fibbing involved

When we last revisited the "X Men Origins: Wolverine" Internet piracy boondoggle, Fox was trying to explain -- not especially successfully -- why studio Co-Chairman Tom Rothman had claimed earlier this month that 10 minutes were missing from the unfinished copy of the film that surfaced on the Internet when, in fact the finished version of the film appears to be exactly the same length as the pirated copy.

Bloggers were especially hard on the studio. Aint It Cool News scoffed at the studio's "10 minutes of the film are missing" claim, saying Fox was simply trying to get people who'd seen the pirated version to pay to see the print that arrives in theaters all across the U.S. this Friday. ("Wolverine" was also due to open in Mexico this weekend, but its premiere has been postponed due to swine flu-related Mexican theater closings.)

Businessinsider.com's Hilary Lewis was even harder on the studio, saying it had been caught in a "lie" that "weakens the trust audiences have in the studio and might lead to more people watching the pirated versions of Fox's films."

As I said in a previous post, I'm not sure the situation is that dire, since history has shown that most fans still want to see a movie with an audience of fellow devotees on the big screen.

But until now, Fox has never adequately explained how Rothman could say 10 minutes of footage were missing when the running times for the pirated version and the theatrical version were the same. At first, I got a bland non-denial. The studio simply said that the pirated workprint was "substantially different than the release version ... and is not remotely representative of the experience that moviegoers will have when the film is finally released theatrically."

But this afternoon the studio was more forthcoming. Fox's senior vice president of corporate communications, Chris Petrikin, who was out of the country on vacation -- in Mexico, of all places -- when bloggers started bashing Rothman last week, explains that he was probably the person who told Rothman that 10 minutes were missing from the pirated version of the film. He stressed that the studio was under enormous pressure after the piracy as it attempted to sift through a host of often wildly speculative Internet reports about the theft.  

"There was no 'fibbing' involved -- that would imply that we were so on top of things that we anticipated having one of our biggest films of the year stolen and had time to concoct a plan to purposefully 'spin' wrong information," Petrikin told me. "Remember, Tom gave this [Entertainment Weekly] interview a day after we learned of the theft. A lot of information and misinformation was flying back and forth then, and there was no way to sort it out quickly or definitively. In fact, I think I told Tom that there might be 10  minutes missing from the stolen version, based -- obviously -- on misinformation I was given or misinterpreted. The real issue is the scale of this crime and that the film was not finished when it was stolen."

RELATED:

DID FOX TELL A WHOPPER ABOUT 'WOLVERINE' THEFT?

Comments

[timjimlee]

How dare they lie to me about how the finished movie is different than the version I illegally downloaded and watched because I have an enormous sense of self-entitlement and am so cheap. I try to justify doing this by citing the ridiculously high price of seeing a movie. What jerks for the industry charging what they want for something they created and then they have the gall to lie to us! Where are their morals?

I'm so mad that I am writing run-on sentences yet this post is devoid of the far too common typos and incoherent ramblings commonly found on these pages that cause the reader to be sidelined from the point of the post in order to figure out what is missing from the sentence structure that the dolt was trying to write.

[rob]

Makes sense to me.
I'll be seeing this weekend...

[Peter T. Barnathan]

what a dumb story. this is considered news now? what happened to the LA Times?

[define]

Two different endings in different theaters must be interesting. :-)

[dave]

Sorry, anyone that decides to download an illegal pre-release copy dosen't have the right to complain about it...

[Andrew]

What is this? The Ari Fleischer school of PR - give me a break. If this is how it went down then it confirms the incompetence and mediocrity that allow people at Fox to keep their job. Either it was a lie, or Fox decided to spin a situation without getting all their facts straight. No wonder NewsCorp stock is in the toilet.

[Amy]

I don't believe a single word of that flack's explanation. What is more likely the case is that Tom Rothman lied, knew he was lying and figured if he or the studio got called on it - he'd make up another lie. Let's remember that this is the guy who meddles with every single movie the studio makes because he knows he can do everyone's job better than they can. A complete megalomaniac. I hope they pay this Petrikin guy well for taking the bullet for a schmuck like Rothman. Oh wait, this is Fox we're talking about so of course he's underpaid - and completely unappreciated,

[Nasıl Yapılır]

Xmen good film. thnx

[Penis Büyütücü]

i love this film. Thnx..