Yesterday I was in the studio I share with Reilly Brown, erstwhile Cable & Deadpool penciller, and Chris Irving, comic book writer. Reilly said something about the upcoming movie Wolverine having been pirated and already released online, and both Chris and he were saying things like "What kind of jerk would do such a thing?"
I jumped in because, with these guys, I'm not afraid of sounding like an idiot. They already know I'm an idiot. "Who cares?" I asked.
Reilly's opinion is that now the movie's box office will be ruined. "Most comic fans have seen the trailers already and know it's going to suck, so they're only going to go so they can see how bad it is. And now they won't have to, they can just download it."
"And think of all the creators who worked on the movie, what about them?" added Chris.
As far as that goes, I'm pretty sure all the gaffers and best boys and hot-gluers got paid already.
As far as Reilly's point, though, I think it's amusing, because I'm a comic fan, and an old-time X-Men collector, and this is the first X-movie I've actually been interested in seeing. Comic fans of my acquaintance really liked the first X-movie, and the director Bryan Singer gained a lot of cred in comic circles -- where he was even forgiven for the aggressively mediocre Superman Returns -- but about the best I could say about it was it was better than I expected. Since I expected it to be the worst superhero movie of all time, this isn't saying much. The second X-movie was less good, and I never bothered with the third one. I just didn't need another two hours or so of underlit cranky mutant angst and blurry CGI, not even for brief shots of Rebecca Romijn essentially naked.
But Wolverine looks pretty cool. Not, you know, great or anything. I mean, isn't Liev Schreiber just too limp-wristed and sensitive an actor to pull off a feral villain named for a giant prehistoric carnivore? Maybe part of why it looks good to me is none of the characters aside from Wolverine had really gained prominence before I stopped collecting. Chris said, "I really want to see them do Gambit well." Who? Name rings a bell. Wasn't he one of the New Mutants or something Art Adams used to draw? Do we give a crap about him now?
In any case, I can't imagine the pirated version making a difference to the movie's bottom line. If anything it might help by generating even more buzz, although the damned thing's being marketed so strongly I can't imagine squeezing any more out of it. Still, Reilly eventually became sanguine about the financial damage: "Fox deserves whatever it gets for how the movie ruins Deadpool."
Who?
For the record, I said FOX deserves whatever they get, not Marvel ;)
Whoops. I'll fix that in the post. (I usually don't go back and edit things like that, but I wouldn't want to misquote you that badly.)
Okay, don't everyone rush at once to ask Reilly if he'll look at their spec script.
Me first.
Dude, chill. He's just, y'know, Reilly. It's not like he's Dean Haspiel.
Seriously, Fox really does deserve whatever happens if they've truly ruined Deadpool the way it seems they have. You don't know who Deadpool is? Well you must have been #2 in line to direct this piece of shit then, because apparently not knowing who your characters are is the prime qualification. If you're going to do a comic-book movie, pick up the damn comic-books before you butcher the characters and piss of the fans.
Ever since the unions have taken over every part of film making, I hope this and every other film gets copied and ruins the industry. Enough with the 20 million dollar paychecks and the strikes and crap. Charging people 10 to 15 dollars for a film is already a crime in itself and maybe this will start to shed a little light on it all. If you dont want to loose millions on films than stop spending millions on them. No actor is worth 20 million dollars and you know what, if the studios took back control and went back to the old contract system, believe me, all these actors would be running to the door to sign them. So I'm glad this film got pirated and, yeah, already seen it and it does suck. So anyone who thinks that this kind of advertisement will help the film, STOP!! your a fool. This film will loose millions, the industry will soon crumble and we will finally be back to the way it should be. The studio controling films and actors.
Enough with the union-bashing and the half-witted comments and crap.
Unions are not the cause of the over-charged movie tickets. The 20 million dollar paychecks are a result of studio negotiations with the stars, not the result of unions. No one has to pay Hugh Jackman or any other star big bucks if they don't want to.
Meanwhile, the cost of making the average movie, in terms of the working men and women who make it all happen, is chump change compared to the profits they still make, even with online file trading and piracy.
Saying that the good ol' days of the studio controlling everything is better than people getting paid decent salaries for the wor they do is the biggest load of horse shit I've ever heard.
You're a red-baiting capitalist goofball, I'll wager, and your next message will accuse me of being a commie. Well, good. I am.