Some of you may have heard that there has been leaked a copy of an uncompleted workprint of the upcoming Wolverine movie.

You will not be seeing a review of this version of the film on our website. As a filmmaking bot, pirating films makes me uneasy, but I wanted to say a few words about this situation.

Firstly, this could cause a serious damage to the box-office to a film that, by all rights, should be great. The trailers have been good, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schrieber are great and Deadpool is a fan favorite. Though it won’t open as well as X3 (because of how terrible that movie was) it should still do well at the box office, at least on opening weekend. And personally, my only misgiving about the film is the inclusion of Gambit, whom I hate as a character. But the early word spreading about this cut of the film is that it sucks.

Fox doesn’t deserve to lose money on a film based on an early cut of the film getting leaked to an overly critical community of rabid geeks like ourselves.

If the film is as good as it could be, then Fox shouldn’t be worried about this leak. Despite what a studio might think, I don’t think internet piracy really affects the box office prospects of a genuinely good film. But, if Fox is seriously worried about this leak (aside from the negligent breach in security), that this film getting leaked is going to damage their box-office because the film isn’t very good, then they have only themselves to blame for making a terrible movie out of one of the most popular properties in the known Universe.

And the fact that Fox seems worried about this leak in more than the “security breach” kind of way has me worried. Fox doesn’t exactly have a great track-record with the Marvel properties they’ve been in charge of that they didn’t have Bryan Singer working on: Fantastic Four 1 & 2, X3, Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider, etc. This does not inspire a high level of confidence. If it weren’t for Bryan Singer’s X-men and X2, I’d be doubtful that Fox could produce a good Marvel movie, but the lingering quality of his Marvel installments offers me hope for this film.

I plan on seeing it opening weekend and I hope Fox didn’t screw it up. If they did, though, then this leak isn’t going to be what sunk them. If they lose a pile of money on this picture, maybe they’ll learn something about what it takes to make a Marvel film and ask Marvel Studios to step in and co-produce. That would be the smartest thing for them in any case.

Though If the film is bad though, and it under-performs they’re going to look to this incident and demonize movie piracy as the sole factor in their flagging profits. But there are a dozen more compelling reasons, the largest being this: good movies make more money.

Anyhow, I could go on like this forever.

Feel free to discuss the issue below.