Mysterious “Theater” Rips Cause Excitement in Piracy Circles

For two decades, high quality screener rips leaked on pirate sites toward the end of the year. That 'tradition' ended a few years ago. More recently, however, there's been some excitement around a seemingly new type of leak, tagged "Theater". Are these high quality copies ripped from DCPs, or is something else going on?

Movie piracy continues to present problems for Hollywood. When films are released on streaming platforms, they are copied and shared online almost immediately.

There’s one type of piracy that’s particularly concerning, however. That’s when a film leaks online before it’s widely available through commercial channels.

The problem isn’t new. Since the early 2000s, leaked copies of Oscar ‘screeners’ would circulate on pirate sites at the end of the year. This practice continued for more than two decades but stopped in recent years, coinciding with law enforcement action against a prominent release group EVO.

While the lack of screener leaks is a moral victory for Hollywood, new concerns are always lurking. A series of mysterious leaks over the past few weeks will be of particular concern.

Theater Leaks

A previously unknown group using the name ‘NaNi’ has recently released a series of films tagged ‘Theater’. The first release, a copy of the movie The Substance, appeared around October 12 and several others have followed since.

These early releases, including copies of The Empire, Jade and The Seed of the Sacred Fig were a bit confusing. In addition to the ‘Theater’ tag, the filenames also mentioned Web-DL, suggesting that they were downloaded from an online source.

For The Substance the source appears to be the streaming platform Mubi, as its logo appears in the intro of the leaked copy.

What stands out, however, is that several of these films were not available as a digital release when they leaked online, suggesting insider access. The Substance, for example, premieres online on October 31, long after pirated copies first began circulating online.

More Leaks, DCP Theater Source?

More ‘NaNi’ releases appeared last week, including a copy of Terrifier 3 which is still in theaters today. Unlike the early releases, this ‘Theater’ version didn’t come with a ‘Web-DL’ mention.

There’s a ‘REMUX’ tag instead, which means the video and audio were taken directly from a high quality source, with separate English subtitles. This was all repackaged into an MKV container without any re-encoding.

The source for the Terrifier 3 leak isn’t mentioned but at a whopping 42.6 Gigabytes, it’s high-quality indeed. This fueled the rumor mill that it may have come directly from a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), a file container used by digital cinemas.

We spoke to several sources who believe that it’s possible the leak came from a DCP source, but currently there is no definite confirmation. According to an AI-assisted technical analysis, a DCP leak is likely but again, not yet proven.

NaNi

What’s clear, however, is that ‘NaNi’ gained access to several films in advance of their official release. That alone is newsworthy, especially if more content continues to find its way online.

It’s possible that NaNi has a source with access to DCPs at a cinema, or elsewhere in the distribution chain. These packages are typically encrypted and further protected by Key Management Systems, so the source likely has the required privileges or somehow exploited a vulnerability.

Whatever the case, the mysterious releases are fuel for discussion at pirate sites.

“Wait, ‘Theater’? Like was this ripped from a movie theater hard drive? Because if that’s the case, then this is a game changer for the piracy scene,” one excited commenter wrote on a torrent site.

Over at Where You Watch, a user named BlueSkull flagged NaNi’s ‘Theater’ leak of Woman of the Hour as a DCP rip. However, the follow-up Terrifier 3 was reported with more reservation.

“Really difficult to define the source of these Nani leaks, but the quality is basically super close to the equivalent of a direct rip from a Blu-ray disc,” BlueSkull wrote.

We will refrain from drawing strong conclusions and monitor the situation as it develops. At this point, we expect that Hollywood’s anti-piracy partners are also keeping an eye on the emergence of “NaNi” and the potential for DCP leaks.

Source

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