The new Spider-Man leaked in its entirety to the web and has already gained millions of views
It seems that even superpowers cannot stop social media pirates. A copy of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" leaked in its entirety to the X platform and quickly accumulated millions of views.
It seems that even superpowers cannot stop Spider-Man's greatest enemy. And no, we are not talking about the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus, but the pirates on social media. This past weekend, the nightmare that all studios fear came true for Sony and Marvel: a pirate copy of their hit leaked online. This happened when a copy of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" leaked in its entirety to the X platform and quickly accumulated millions of views.
The post, which includes the full 145-minute movie, was first uploaded yesterday morning to an anonymous account and quickly gained exposure to no less than 5.9 million users before it was finally removed after about 9 hours. In that short time, the post managed to garner over 143 thousand likes and tens of thousands of shares. According to reports from American media outlets, it is a "high-quality" video, though we have not watched it ourselves to confirm.
The problem is, of course, that from the moment the movie was uploaded to the web, it has obviously already been duplicated and downloaded thousands of times, and will soon appear on a host of other pirate platforms, which could hurt the film's revenue.
Elon's change
It's not that there was a lack of platforms for distributing videos before, but since Elon Musk acquired X and gave paying subscribers the ability to upload video files up to four hours long, various pirate groups have been using this to distribute full-length movies. While there are enforcement and removal mechanisms, they are not keeping up with the pace of re-uploads and the volume of views.
By the way, the new Spidey is not the only blockbuster that has leaked online. Last week, "The Odyssey," the new film by Christopher Nolan, also leaked online, and it accumulated 2.1 million pirate views in just two and a half hours. Universal Studios said at the time:
"We identified the unauthorized publication and immediately activated our removal protocol. We take copyright infringement very seriously and will take all legal measures to protect our intellectual property."
Despite the recent leak, Peter Parker is winning at the box office. With Tom Holland and Zendaya in the lead roles, the film set a record on its opening day for a Sony and Marvel sequel, with a revenue forecast of 167 to 173 million dollars for the weekend. These numbers surpass the opening day of "Avengers: Endgame" from 2019, which stood at 157.4 million dollars.
