Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ever hear of a movie bieng illegally pre-released?

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Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 06-05-2003, 12:33 AM:

A local music store in my area "Broke the truck" today and started to sell the new Metallica CD "Saint Anger" at 10am. It is not supposed to be released until thursday. I heard that the store will be fined one thousand dollars. Due to this all other local stores were allowed to begin selling the disc today. My question is this... Has this ever happened with a theatrical movie release and what would/did happen to the theatre involved? How do you think the studio would handle it if XXX theatres started showing a film on thursday when the release is friday? would they allow other local theatres to start showing it early also?

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 06-05-2003, 12:47 AM:

Seems like there were some theatres that opened one of the Star Wars movies on Thursday night at 11:00-something. Before midnight, anyway, and not on Friday. Don't remember what the consequences were, if any.

Posted by Nicholas Roznovsky (Member # 861) on 06-05-2003, 01:24 AM:

I imagine the exhibitor could expect to not get any of the distributor's product for a while. The whole situation becomes much more interesting if the exhib decides to show the film starting on a Wednesday and doesn't start reporting box grosses until Friday... I imagine the distribs would have a much bigger problem with that.

Of course, the whole problem is solved by those last-minute TES deliveries. And all this time we thought they were fighting piracy! [Wink]

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 06-05-2003, 11:23 AM:

What a bunch of assholes. Atlantic records is holding DVD release parties (the DVD comes with the CD) along with this release to benefit some Leukemia charity. We have one here tonight, projecting a 60-foot wide image of the DVD video onto the Imax screen (85-feet wide) with 5.1 audio. (Last week, we had a release party for the Led Zeppelin DVD and 300 people showed up for it.)

The date for this party was changed three times because they couldn't decide what day the DVD was going to be released. These last minute changes mean, of course, I'm working 8am to 2am today. [Mad]

As far as pre-releasing movies, I've done a lot of 12:01am Friday shows for summer product, but never jumped the gun more than that.

Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 06-05-2003, 03:00 PM:

It was my assumption that for the most part if you tried playing a movie earlier one of your competitors would rat you out or it would have to be one of those "word of mouth" things.

I'm sure it's easier to get away with as the only game in a small town where people just KNOW what's playing via marquee or whatnot. But any newspaper advertising would alert the distributor somehow.

I heard of a small town theatre that used to advertise one thing in the newspapers and on their recording, but everybody in town knew that whatever the marquee said was what was really showing. The theatre owner would truck in newer first run prints from another theatre when it was done playing them and then play them at the small town where distribs weren't willing to give up the print.