Marvel blames Reddit for poor Ant-Man showing; what other films have been subjected to online leaks?

It’s Reddit’s fault that Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania hasn’t done as well as Disney had hoped the launch of Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would do. That’s at least the optics of the House of Mouse’s latest move to find out who leaked 63 pages of the film’s script a month before its cinematic release on the popular discussion website.

Variety is reporting that a request from Marvel was filed last Friday (March 10) at a federal district court in California to issue a subpoena to compel Reddit to identify the person or group responsible for sharing dialogue from “Quantumania” to the r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers subreddit “on or about” Jan. 20, 2023.

Marvel also filed a DMCA subpoena requesting similar info from Google, after someone allegedly shared the document to Google Docs.

Marvel requested “all Identifying Information for the user ‘u/MSSmods’” as well as that of “any other user(s) responsible for posting, editing, and/or maintaining the content” that was available on the subreddit (but is no longer) for the period from Jan. 15-Feb. 15. The Marvel subpoena request was filed pursuant to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The belief isn’t simply that large portions of dialogue were revealed before the film’s cinematic release, but that it would potentially be used for subtitle purposes for illegal streams or torrent downloads (per TorrenFreak’s report on the filing), thus posing an even bigger problem of the film being viewed illegally through a litany of questionable streaming sites.

PeopleWorld takes a look at previous incidents of movie leaks, be it scripts or the entire films themselves, that led to a problematic production period for the writers, editors and even cast members involved in these popular movies.

Scream 3

Perhaps one of the most well-known instances of the internet running the fun for everyone, the Scream franchise after the first film’s success was always dogged by impatient fans wanting to know who the killer would be in subsequent films.

Scream 3, filmed between July to September 1999, saw its entire script leaked online, revealing the original killer of the series being (duh dum dum…) Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell. Franchise creator Wes Craven was not happy about this leak, and the film underwent several re-writes, with the cast being given redacted copies of the script to avoid the same fate happening again. Or again and again, when another copy of the script leaked shortly after the rewrites.

It held up the release of the film, as the ending had to be reshot in January 2000. That might explain then the lacklustre reveal of who the killer is, and the mental gymnastics Craven and Kevin Williamson had to undertake to ensure the ending was still a surprise.

The Hateful Eight

Another case of a script being leaked online - and who would have the guts to cross Quentin Tarantino? Some brave souls decided to tempt the wrath of the Pulp Fiction and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood auteur, as the first draft of the script somehow managed to surface online in 2015.

It was especially hurtful for Tarantino, who revealed to Entertainment Weekly in May 2015 that only six people had a copy of the first draft - three of which became cast members in the film; Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen. “And these were people I trusted,” he revealed. “Normally when I actually show it to people, I’m done. But this first draft was literally just showing it to just a few friends.”

“There were scenes that I wasn’t even ready to write yet, situations I hadn’t even figured out yet. That’s why it was so not ready for anybody but just a couple of the inner circle.”

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Script leaks are one thing, but actual film leaks are a completely different ball game. In the case of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, an entire DVD-quality workprint of the film was released to torrent websites on March 31, 2009.

That led to one of the biggest investigations at that stage of film piracy, with both the FBI and the MPAA investigating the illegal posting, which included alternative sound effects, and fonts used for titling and included the company Rising Sun Pictures within its titles.

Rising Sun Pictures were accused of being behind the leak, given they were tasked with the visual effects for the movie, but the truth of the leak is far less scandalous than a visual effects team with a grudge. The original upload was traced to a Bronx man named Gilberto Sanchez, who uploaded it to the site Megaupload in March 2009.

According to Sanchez, he bought the unlicensed DVD copy from a Korean man - Sanchez was sentenced to one year in federal prison.

Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Despite the fandom’s reaction to Episodes I and II being, for lack of a better word, lukewarm (bordering outrage), it didn’t stop 16,000 people from streaming Star Wars Episode III illegally, when the entire film was leaked online on May 19 2005 a mere few hours before it’s cinematic release.

The entire film, not a workprint, spread like wildfire on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent, with the source of the leak traced to a handheld camera filming an advance screening of the movie. 8 people were arrested and faced up to three years in prison, although their guilty pleas cut their sentencing down to a month behind bars.

Though the numbers were relatively low for a leak of this ilk; some attributed the lack of more people streaming and downloading the film due to a lack of interest in the new trilogy. They couldn’t even give it away it would seem.

Thor: Ragnarok

Marvel Cinematic Universe cast members have also been caught leaking films ahead of cinematic releases, though in the case of Thor: Ragnarok it was a case of someone not knowing how to use social media.

Cast member Mark Ruffalo, who played Hulk in several MCU films including Taika Waititi’s first foray into the universe, was live streaming his appearance ahead of a preview of the film. The problem was that Ruffalo was unfamiliar with how to turn the stream off - leading to the first 20 minutes of the film being seen by fans of his on Facebook Live.

During a 2020 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, he revealed “My phone was blowing up. Everyone and their mother was texting me from all over the world to tell me that my phone was on and I was live broadcasting the movie. Of course, I’m a gentleman, so I don’t check my phone during movies.”

Eventually, someone was sent to inform Ruffalo that his phone was on. “I pulled it out and I was like, ‘Ohhhhh.... s**t.’”