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The Expendables 3 Gets Leaked Online

By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)

Nothing proves the market for streaming movies over the Internet more than when a high-profile film gets leaked online. It happened with a rough cut X-Men Origins: Wolverine a few years ago, and now The Expendables 3 has been leaked and downloaded nearly 200,000 times in just 24 hours. And it’s not just some work in progress either. What does it say about security in the film industry, and whether filmmakers should consider the ‘lean forward’ experience more seriously?

 

The fact is: pirate sites don’t discriminate based on a movie’s budget. As long as they can generate revenue from advertising?and?credit card paymentswhile giving away your stolen content for freepirate site operators have little reason to care if a film starts with an investment of $10,000 or $200 million. Whether you’re employed by a major studio or a do-it-yourself creator, if you’re involved in the making of TV or film, it’s safe to assume that piracy takes a big cut out of your business.” – statement by Ruth Vitale, executive director of CreativeFuture, and Tim League, founder and CEO of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Everyone is calling it piracy. And strictly speaking, it is. When you consider that the average price of going to the movies is $8.15 per ticket, and multiply that by the 200,000 downloads in just a day, that’s nearly $2 million dollars that Lionsgate has lost when someone on the inside decided to upload a high resolution version of Sylvester Stallone‘s latest war-time tent pole online. Sure, I guess you can call it that. Or, you could call it a very cagey $2 million ad campaign where people like me are writing about how many have used file sharing services to find the movie and watch it. Can you really buy attention like that?

I’m not saying I approve. Don’t get me wrong, piracy is wrong, and it’s a crime. But these things don’t happen in a vacuum. Somebody on the inside of the studio process for The Expendables 3 understands the power of the Internet, and decided to put it up there to either generate momentum, or to make some sort of point. Or, just because they’re a crook, with possible ties to the piracy site. But while the leaking of the film did cost Lionsgate $2 million in theoretical box office receipts, and counting, they’re more than likely to make it up anyway.

See, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that file sharing doesn’t impact Hollywood like the film industry wants you to think it does. According to a study by economist Koleman Strumpf, movie piracy doesn’t hurt Hollywood at all. Strumpf looked at the data from 150 major film releases from 2003-2009 and his conclusions were that file sharing only accounted for an aggregate impact of .3% of box office receipts. Meanwhile, the MPAA has waged a legal jihad as well as spending a half billion dollars in their anti-piracy efforts for that same period. Essentially, the MPAA program has been as effective in stopping online file sharing of movies as the U.S. government has in the war on drugs.

Back to my advertising angle for a second. Strumpf also believes that if a film is leaked online shortly before it’s released in the theaters, much like The Expendables 3 has been, it can actually help the opening weekend. "One explanation is that such releases create greater awareness of the film,” Strumf speculated. “This is also the period of heaviest advertising.”

If anything, in some ways, much like music, it helps people to discover movies that they wouldn’t normally view and end up becoming fans of. So you may not get them plunking down $15 at the box office on opening weekend, but they may go in week two, or buy it on Blu-ray, or at least rent it when it comes out on RedBox. That’s the data. Netflix knows this. They troll file sharing sites in order to determine what movies they should sign up for their streaming service.

Again, piracy is a crime. And when you download a movie without paying for it, you open yourself up to litigation and even prison, especially if you aid in its distribution. And I’m not saying that Hollywood should do nothing. But there’s no denying that while there’s a minimal economic impact from a film being released on torrent sites, there’s also an economic benefit. And someone knows this, maybe even Lionsgate, but that’s my speculation. Putting it another way, was I going to go see The Expendables 3 at the movies? Not in the least. I didn’t see the first two either. But now, after seeing that 200,000 people and counting have downloaded it, they may be on to something here. So I’m more likely to go see it in the theaters and look for the other chapters on Netflix.

Hat Tip – Indiewire