Comic-Con Leaks Could Mean Less Exclusive Footage from Major Studios

By all accounts Comic-Con was another massive success. No, Marvel wasn't there but so what? Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Quentin Tarantino, and Lucasfilm brought the wood this year and rocked us to our geeky cores. But there's a big problem on the horizon and it's something I've been worried about for a long time. The Deadpool, Suicide Squad, and X-Men: Apocalypse trailers were huge hits with the Hall H crowd who got exclusive looks at the first footage from those films. But almost as soon as they were over, some jackoffs uploaded bootleg versions to the Internet. Despite repeated warning not to do so, folks were recording the footage anyway and a price is about to be paid.

According to Deadline, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. are pissed about the leaks, and there's a good chance we may not see anymore exclusive content at Comic-Con. And who can really blame them? The security was as tight as it could be for Lucasfilm's Star Wars panel, but people were still in there Periscoping the event. They got caught, but I know personally know people who were watching it from the comfort of their homes. My response is: Fuck those people. They ruin stuff like this for the rest of us. Here's what Warner Bros. marketing and distribution exec Sue Kroll says:

“We have no plans currently to release the Suicide Squad footage that leaked from Hall H on Saturday. It’s unfortunate and ultimately damaging that one individual broke a long-standing trust we have enjoyed with our fans at the convention by posting early material, which, at this point, was not intended for a wider audience. We are still in production on Suicide Squad, and will have a big campaign launch in the future. Our presentation yesterday was designed to be experienced in that room, on those big screens!”

So there will be release of the Suicide Squad trailer that played, nor will we see anything from Deadpool for about three weeks according to Ryan Reynolds. That's if Fox decides they still want to. The irony is that it was leaked test footage that got Deadpool a green light to begin with. Surprisingly we haven't seen a leak of the eight minutes of The Hateful Eight that Quentin Tarantino showed. If that happens, don't expect to EVER see him in Hall H again. 

But what can really be done when big sites like Comic Book Movie and The Daily Beast readily post the leaked footage because they know it will drive traffic? We've done it on occasion but decided during last year's Comic-Con that we'd never do it again. It's not worth it to get on the studios' bad side, and frankly I've seen too many people judging movies based on really shitty bootleg footage. Saw somebody do that tonight about Deadpool, and it just read as dumb as a bag of hammers. 

In the future it won't be a shock if we see more of what Lucasfilm did, which is bring nothing in the way of new trailers, but provide a behind-the-scenes featurette which can then safely be released online. The fans still ate it up, and nothing that Abrams wanted kept secret was revealed.