Pirated ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Blu-Ray Leaks Online

[Batu69]

he official Blu-Ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is scheduled to be released in two weeks time but an early copy has just leaked on various pirate sites. Considering the hype around the movie in recent months it's no surprise that hundreds of thousands of fans have already downloaded the movie.

 

After becoming one of the top grossing movies of all time in theaters, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now gearing up for its home entertainment releases.

Many people are expected to buy the Blu-Ray and DVDs, which are scheduled to come out on April 5th, so they can relive the latest chapter in the convenience of their own home.

 

However, it appears that pirates are off to an early start. As is often the case with popular movies, the Blu-Ray versions of Star Wars: The Force Awakens has leaked online in advance of its retail debut.

 

There are currently dozens of copies posted on torrent, hosting and streaming sites, including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents where it leads the lists of most shared files.

 

The first copy appeared online yesterday and within 12 hours an estimated 250,000 people had already grabbed a copy. This number is likely to increase to several millions during the weeks to come.

 

The Blu-Ray disc, posted below, originates from the REPLiCA release group and appears to be a regular retail copy.

Under the most recent rules, Scene release groups are required to supply a photo of the physical disc with their group tag as proof.

 

Leaked Star Wars Blu-Ray
 

 

The leaked Blu-Ray is by no means the first footage that has ended up on pirate sites. Several camcorded copies of the movie have been floating online for three months, but due to their low quality the interest in these releases has been limited. Needless to say, this isn’t an issue with the Blu-Ray version.

 

Screenshot from the pirated Blu-Ray
 

 

In recent weeks Disney and Lucasfilm have tried to limit the exposure of pirated copies. The companies sent out tens of thousands of takedown requests to Google. However, on most pirate sites the film remains widely available.

 

In any case, it’s safe to say that the movie studios will be disappointed with the early pirate release, which is likely to eat away at some of the home entertainment revenues.

 

Article source

[DKT27]

Personally, I'm against leaking of things before their release. It probably has a big effect on the makers and such. These movies require high amount of money. Making big profit or not, we need to support the makers. By leaking it online far before it's release date, one is being unfair.

 

On the other hand, while it may or may not be case here, I have never understood such a long wait to release a movie in public though.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, DKT27 said:

Personally, I'm against leaking of things before their release. It probably has a big effect on the makers and such. These movies require high amount of money. Making big profit or not, we need to support the makers. By leaking it online far before it's release date, one is being unfair.

 

On the other hand, while it may or may not be case here, I have never understood such a long wait to release a movie in public though.

Its normal  for the scene to get blu-ray  about 2 weeks ahead of the USA  blu-ray release date sometimes it's even more early on, if the blu-ray came out in a different  region before them . They done made a lot  of money off this at the box office  

 

List of box office records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_box_office_records_set_by_Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens

Box office Gross

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus

 

They made billions off this movie already and they never was a good copy leaked out tell 2 weeks before release  they done good .

 

Now days people dont have to wait no time,  before the internet and DSL in the early 80s you  had to wait  forever for it to come out on  the movie channels on cable that's if you was lucky enough to have cable and the money to pay the extra fee for a movie channel .. we spent many of weekends  at the Drive In  and theaters  so we didn't have to wait .. Hollywood would love  to take us back to this era were all movies made a killing like this one did 

 

Now days there's like a million titles on the internet plus tv shows  it dont hurt you to wait tell 2 weeks before just watch something else . People have become spoiled to having everything to soon . I seen the very 1st Star wars movie ever at the theaters when it was new when I was just a little kid.

[heyyahblah]

I like Star Wars, but this movie sucked anyways. It was just a re-hash of A New Hope.

 

I think Rey and Finn are shit characters and I don't like how 'REY' is supposedly all amazing better then Luke and etc, right off the bat. Seriously? F-OFF. This movie ain't even worth my HDD space. The suck awakens.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_yQgfO3xQ

[steven36]

54 minutes ago, heyyahblah said:

I like Star Wars, but this movie sucked anyways.

I think that about most movies today ..A lot times i get more enjoyment  out of some low budget  indie film, but the masses  thinks  that movies must have a very large budget  for it to be good so most would disagree with you about this movie it has a   8.4 ratting at IMDb, as far as movies i dont need a critic or even IMDb to decide for me . i watch them and decide for myself .

[info999]

why is this even a news ? all movies are being pirated all the times

[dman]

16 hours ago, DKT27 said:

On the other hand, while it may or may not be case here, I have never understood such a long wait to release a movie in public though.

 

There is actually something called the Release Window - this is usually 90-120 days (it used to be as long as six months, but dropped to four months and more recently three months), from release at a cinema before home media - but digital has managed to sneak in 2-4 weeks earlier than the physical media which is why you might see WEB-DL, which are iTunes rips which often come out just shortly before the Bluray rip does.  There has been a long standing agreement in nearly every territory that films are exhibited in, some of which goes back right to the start of cinema. 

 

As you may know, studios often don't distribute a movie internationally, they get someone else to do it, possibly another arm of the company or do a deal with a different studio altogether - back in the days of $1500 each film prints which last about 200-300 viewings, depending on the equipment, that meant the studio could concentrate on the home market, the USA in most cases, spend the advertising dollars to get bums on seats. 

 

The international distributor had to deal with every single territory that film was to be sold into, often dealing with a local distributor in each territory.  The local distributor then had to pay to make film prints and then ship them to every cinema they wanted to show the film in - a very costly and time consuming process.  Now in the days of digital, often its just an encrypted hard drive which is couriered out, but usually only one per physical location.  "Projectionists" often just load the drive into an open bay and within minutes the picture would appear in a list of other films already on the disk array and you then can select which cinema it will be projected on - or programming, which is most common these days - the process, including opening and closing curtains, changing the screen mask and adjusting top and bottom curtains, anamorphic lenses, ads, trailers, the works, signals are either all on the print, or it's all programmed into the system.

 

In order to protect the exhibitors, this Release Window has been in effect for a very long time, but studios are finding that none of the exhibitors want to give up any days between cinema release and home media release.  If you Google "Film Distribution" you can read all about it, including one instance of Disney trying to release a movie early in Germany, and the theatre owners threatened not to show any Disney films

 

Quote

In early 2010, Disney announced it would be putting out the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland 14 weeks after the movie's release date (instead of the usual 17) in order to avoid competition from the 2010 World Cup. In response to such statements, theatre owners made threats not to show the movie on their screens, but later reconsidered their position before the movie was released.

 

From an expanded article I read, It's implied that Disney possibly gave them some financial consideration.

 

So for the time being we are stuck with this old fashioned system, until the studios realise that day/date releases to ALL forms of media is the best way to capitalise on a film.  It's likely exhibitors would go nuts since a lot of them had to spend something like USD$100K per screen to convert to Digital - they will want to be showing movies for a long time to come to get that recent investment back.  Day/Date release around the world would also likely mean high piracy rates, but depends on what qualities they release - they may release an iTunes resolution which isn't bad, but they may save the Bluray or Ultra HD Bluray for a few months after - I guess we will wait and see - but my money is on the old school movie release window before home media staying for quite some time, and since there are so many hands in pockets along the way, physical media is likely to stay around for quite a while too - i'd put money on at least 10-15 years...

 

How do I know all this, I used to work in the industry, not as a projectionist or anything like that, but I was heavily involved in the post-production side of film and television for more than ten years.

 

Hope someone found this enlightening.  Cheers.

[worldsdream]

13 hours ago, heyyahblah said:

I like Star Wars, but this movie sucked anyways. It was just a re-hash of A New Hope.

 

I think Rey and Finn are shit characters and I don't like how 'REY' is supposedly all amazing better then Luke and etc, right off the bat. Seriously? F-OFF. This movie ain't even worth my HDD space. The suck awakens.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_yQgfO3xQ

 

Exactly what i thought after watching the movie. Let us hope that the next two that are going to be released will be better. I heard that Luke will have a big role in the next one.

[DKT27]

On 23/3/2016 at 4:36 AM, heyyahblah said:

I like Star Wars, but this movie sucked anyways. It was just a re-hash of A New Hope.

 

I think Rey and Finn are shit characters and I don't like how 'REY' is supposedly all amazing better then Luke and etc, right off the bat. Seriously? F-OFF. This movie ain't even worth my HDD space. The suck awakens.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_yQgfO3xQ

 

I personally liked it. The reason is, because of such a long wait, I will take anything Star Wars that they can give.

 

Having said, I agree what you have said too. The main thing that kept me on it is that Luke is still considered the king and for me that means a lot.

 

11 hours ago, dman said:

 

 

Thanks for explaining. It's good to know all that.

 

But there has to be some way to speed things up. Movies do not run more than 30 days in theaters, just picking a number here, but you get the point, anything beyond it means there is a lot of empty area left, for which they can fill with releases. It's time all came together and said we need this movie released in public and that, fast.

 

10 hours ago, worldsdream said:

I heard that Luke will have a big role in the next one.

 

Did not know, good to know that.

[vibranium]

I even think they would bring back Han Solo somehow.

[dman]

13 hours ago, DKT27 said:

But there has to be some way to speed things up. Movies do not run more than 30 days in theaters, just picking a number here, but you get the point, anything beyond it means there is a lot of empty area left, for which they can fill with releases. It's time all came together and said we need this movie released in public and that, fast.

 

Good luck in trying to change the model - I'm not trying to be a "negative nancy" here, but it's a long entrenched model - the Internet has changed everything and we are taking advantage of easy distribution albeit an illegitimate one (scene or p2p rips).

 

If you want your voice heard, you are best to find out who is your country's distributor of Hollywood films and write to them - email if you must, but a written letter these days means you've actually bothered to write, print, put in an envelope, adhere a stamp and mail it.  If there is no method to email, that is the way I suggest - someone *will* read your letter, and you will get a response.  One person isn't going to change things, but enough people writing might reduce that release window down from 90-120 days to only 60 days.

 

Technology is likely to drag those dinosaur-age distribution models kicking and screaming into the 21st Century - so a widely adopted platform which allows Hollywood studios to distribute movies direct to end users, such as Google Play or Apple iTunes is the start - and like I said, digital distribution comes out a several weeks earlier than physical home media (DVD and/or Bluray).

 

One thing I neglected to mention is part of the "release window" was originally to for the local distributors to get the release prints from the cinemas once the film finishes exhibition, since the cinemas don't actually "own" the print or the movie.

 

The other thing worth mentioning is that the ratio of money taken by the exhibitor (cinema) and distributor changes depending on how long the film is shown for, the following is a very quick break down, it's actually a little more complex than my example and varies from country (or territory) to country.

 

Ratio of Theater owner:Distributor share in case of Multiplexes

Week 1 --  50:50
Week 2 --  60:40
Week 3 --  70:30
Later --     same as week 3
(Subject to terms of agreement) As I said varies - this is just an example.

 

So as you can see it is actually in the cinema/exhibitors' best interest to keep the movie on their screens as long as possible - but as you say, these days movies rarely are shown for more than 30-40 days.

 

Cheers.

[jtmulc]

On 3/24/2016 at 8:18 AM, dman said:

I used to work in the industry, not as a projectionist or anything like that, but I was heavily involved in the post-production side of film and television for more than ten years.

 

A friend of mine was manager of a movie theater for many years.  What you've said is spot on.

 

18 hours ago, dman said:

Ratio of Theater owner:Distributor share in case of Multiplexes

Week 1 --  50:50
Week 2 --  60:40
Week 3 --  70:30

 

And that is why popcorn and a drink costs as much as the movie ticket. 

[anakin206]

I liked the movie. Yes, it is like a new "A New Hope" but I liked it anyways. Also I had downloaded it 2 days ago

[straycat19]

I haven't even seen the first Star Wars movie yet, so why would I watch this.  For what it is worth, the retail DVDs hit some stores a month ago with labels on the boxes not to sell til 5 April and have been sitting in storerooms except some employees get to 'preview' the movie.  That is how they leak early.