The Leaked Copy Didn’t Hurt Wolverine after all – on the contrary

Early Claws Out Paid Off!

In April when we reported the leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine there was ‘mourning’ time for Fox. Even the star of the movie, Hugh Jackman was extremely upset with the ‘release’ of the movie on the p2p networks.

However, a month later and the situation doesn’t seem so critical. On the contrary – the movie tops the box office as it cashed in $87 million within the opening weekend.

According to Variety, Wolverine’s opening take “came despite a working copy of the movie being pirated a month before the film’s opening. [Fox] isn’t sure how much the piracy ate into the box office, but some insiders suggest it could be as much as $20 million.”

Nothing is ever enough these days for the industry, is it? Although 'Wolverine' had the second biggest opening in the X-Men series (X-Men:The Last Stand brought in $103 million on its opening weekend but let’s not forget that its opening was on Memorial Day in 2003, and that counts as great, favorable time for such openings) the industry is really upset and focused on the loss peer-to-peer networks might have caused them!

Let’s take a closer look – this is a movie with just one of the X-Men stars casted in it which wasn’t released as its predecessor to take advantage of the best release time and despite all that it does better than nearly all the previous movies in this series. Can we then talk about a huge damage to the industry’s revenue due to an unfinished copy of the film? Nonsense.

So even for a second there, how come the industry didn’t think that actually the publicity and all the fuss around the leaked copy was the one to bring the audience in such a large number in theatres and therefore ‘responsible’ for what is, after all, a great success? Plus, as we all know the leaked copy was an incomplete version of the film, just a raw taste of it, which would have only motivated fans to go see the integral one.

Now let’s take a look at some statistics published by the Inquisitr:

“Wolverine pirated” delivers a staggering 1.42 million results in Google despite only now being released. That’s 1.42million mentions of the pirated copy that wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been pirated. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers 4.9 million results despite only being released this weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop has 3.5 million results despite being a number one at the box office months ago. Like it or not, the pirated copy of Wolverine drove a lot of attention to the movie, and that attention helped result in…. a number one at the box office, and the second biggest take in the X-Men franchise.

Dismissing the publicity the leaked copy brought to the movie in this case is sheer hypocrisy and ill will I’d say.