thelastaxolotl [he/him]
Movies & TVMovie piracy is one of those debates all across Hollywood. With everything being digital now, files for every movie coming out this year all exist somewhere in the cloud. And if you get a motivated hacker, it feels like nothing is safe.
Enter The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender, which appears to have been hacked off the Nickelodeon and Paramount servers. Or leaked, depending on who you believe on various torrent and social media websites.
This movie was slated to come out on October 9th, maybe in theaters, maybe on Paramount+, and while we can't verify if it's 100% real, links ot it have been taken down due to copyright claims, so that feels like an affirmation without admission.
While the news of the Avatar Aang leak is a blow to the production team, it serves as a massive case study for the industry on the fragility of digital security.
Is any movie safe?
Let's dive in.
What Happened with Avatar?
Over the weekend, a full-length copy of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender surfaced online. As it spread over social media and then sites like 4Chan,
The film was slated for an October 9 release on Paramount+, but it is now being distributed via vanishing links and torrent sites.
The source of the leak remains a point of contention. While some reports point to a coordinated hack of Nickelodeon’s servers, the initial leaker claimed the file was "accidentally emailed" to them.
But now, years of work by hundreds of artists have been compromised before the marketing machine could even release a trailer. Why This is an Industry Nightmare
No one wants the conversation around their movie to be led by hackers who got it with ill intent, even if those hackers might be "fans."
No one wants their movie press guided by people who have seen the movie chiming in on what they liked, didn't, and all sorts of stuff that, in the nine months leading up to the release. They are effectively bombing its theatrical play, and maybe even bombing marketing, and possibly even recuts of the movie.
This creates a vacuum where the studio loses control of the narrative. Instead of a polished trailer setting the tone, the first impression for many will be a low-bitrate, unauthorized upload.
And again, the people who may have paid to see it are now fewer.
Summing It All Up
Paramount is currently playing a game of "whack-a-mole," issuing copyright takedowns as fast as new links appear. And the people behind the movie have to suffer with no way to put Pandora back in the box.
I thought this came out in 2004
I don't think Hollywood has made any films or tv shows not based on existing properties for at least 10 years now.
This reminds me of the end of Andor when...
::: spoiler Andor spoilers ...Dedra basically got emailed the plans to the death star when she wasn't supposed to receive them,and it's what takes her down by the end. Iirc the writers thought it would be kinda funny if something that minor got her, some slip in the giant bureaucratic machine that is required for something like the empire, and I loved it when I watched it because ya, sometimes life be like that.
Of course we're still not sure if it was a mistaken email that got the ATLA movie leaked or a hack, but the fact that I find the former absolutely believable says something about the world and the realistic choices they made for Andor. :::
Free movie free slop
Artists got paid, marketing team got laid (off) and God is in his heaven
Its on public trackers lmao, the animation is super good but I only watched the first 3 minutes.
9 months before release the film is ready to go? I guess that is so they have time for marketing then. These companies should thank the pirates, they won't need to pay for marketing since people will find out if the movie is any good long before it releases. I'm sure they wouldn't release a low quality movie and try to obfuscate that with trailers and paid reviews, that would be downright amoral.
Watched it - it was alright. Absolutely stunning animation, top tier honestly, pretty weak on the writing and character fronts though. It very much had a Korra-adjacent plot and major conflict.
Korra-adjacent as in the politics/lack of coherent worldview, or just in quality of writing? I have it downloaded, I'm just waiting to watch it.
Plot and lack of coherent worldview more so than politics, since the political angle is really glossed over. Minor spoilers since it's introduced in the first five minutes but
::: spoiler spoiler They introduce non-bending proto-equalists, "The Denied", whose main motivation is being so jealous of benders that they wanna kill the avatar. Their political, or really any, motivation takes a far distant second in priority to "fuck this guy in particular!" :::
They already did that in the second? season of Korra though right?
First season iirc.
And third season arguably too
I think there was a major lack of concentration on the characterization of the gaang for a movie about how important they are to him. If you're not Katara then you're there to get your designated screentime and do your audience safe catchphrase.
I agree with you. It was an absolute master class for the animation team and the safest most sterile plot you can create. Will I spoil anything when I reveal that there's a new character who seems cool but is actually a douchebag and then they hit rock bottom before a climactic fight where ideals clash? The story is there for business, not pleasure.
::: spoiler spoiler I wish every single mid-fight revelation was like the League of Legends Still Here cinematic where Trynd is fighting Kindred. I think it would have been especially appropriate here instead of flash remembering the kids and Gyatso. There was a dream sequence in the beginning, multiple instances of consciousness transitions, a moment of chasing spirits, and a theme of trusting instincts. If Aang would have been lead by instinct (set up throughout the fight and the arguing) to overpowering the staff-spirit-emotions I would ignore every single critique I've ever thought of having about the movie. :::
There was so much that was there that it seems a shame to my sensibilities they didn't awaken what the movie was really about for them. They didn't get that bankai awakening of coherence and narrative that the story could have had with a little more love and care.
This article seems to be framing this as a negative when they say the studio can no longer control the narrative. Yes, it means their marketing is less effective and they make less money. If it sucks. If the product is good and part of an established franchise like this, people will still watch it.
The Minecraft movie leaked online and it still made millions in theaters. Avatar (the blue one) was the most pirated movie back in 2008 or whenever it came out while it also being the top grossing film of all time.
This reads like "the review embargo ruined our chance of milking people for their funds before they could tell all their friends it was horrible"
Take advantage of the crowd sourced guerilla marketing.
Yeah it's like game demos.
Game demos stopped being a thing because giving people a demo generally only gives people reasons to not buy it, unless your game has completely nailed it and is going to be loved by everyone.
I would assume it's also why the only traditionally published games we get public betas for are things like bg3 and ER where they have a huge amount of public will built up, the series is extremely popular, and the team know they've totally nailed it.
Time for a struggle session over whether watching the leak is harmful to artists or whether piracy is always based
Meanwhile we'll probably be watching this on blorp this Saturday or next
What is blorp
Artists already got paid, nobody we should care about gets royalties from eyes on the stream
Any artist getting royalties is petit bourgeois and should've joined the ranks of their prole artists. Their fault for not taking a wage instead. Hear, hear!
Meanwhile we'll probably be watching this on blorp this Saturday or next
Lol, remember that leaked unfinished minecraft movie we watched on blorp, it was 10x better than the actual finished movie
Please @ me when we do
It was aggressively mid
but April to October is 6 months not 9 months?
No but the year just started so it's like 9 months till October, right?
The LLM that wrote this article can't measure time, either
How many months in strawberry?
That’s a great question — I totally understand the confusion about how many months are in strawberry. Don’t worry — I got this: there are four months in strawberry.
Leaking an entire movie 9 months prior of the release in a fucking e-mail is a new level of stupidity that I was not prepared.
Sorry for the people who work on it and probably would still work until the release.
Sorry for the people who work on it and probably would still work until the release.
No one we should give a shit about is losing their job over this except maybe the leaker. They aren't going to just cancel the release and animators/writers/whatever either already have been paid or still will be. The only people who might miss out are marketing and their ilk, and I just do not GAF.
I'm not even thinking about losing jobs, for a few things that I saw of the leak this doesn't seem completely finished and I don't know if paramount would do anything more with it so I'm sorry for the artists that can't finish their work.
I really doubt they will abandon a near complete project based on a highly popular IP over a leak. If they do that's a shame, but... Doubtful it will happen.
I don't think they will abandon but I don't think they will spend any time or money on it, I'm guessing they will officially release in the same state of the leak, with some minor errors and audio problems.
The fact that E-mail still exists as a form of communication for anything more complicated than a plaintext mailing list so incredibly shocking, boomers can't let go of it and the zoomers are forced to use it.
What is wrong with email exactly? You'd prefer we all use Shitcord instead I presume?
It's non-real-time. It sits in a box waiting for you. You're not incentivized to be in a place to get messages for fear of missing them. You don't have to scroll through unrelated crap. It's federated which means no single company can dominate it. You can use whatever app you like to download and send messages over standardized protocols so you can't be forced to view ads or spied on. Yeah it's not encrypted meaningfully (provider to provider with the NSA sitting on both ends listening) but what is that is in mainstream usage? It can be encrypted with plugins.
So where do you get off insulting email? What's your alternative that is superior and meets the same needs?
Obligatory "you wouldn't email a car"
Okay so is it some kind of workprint? Seems odd if the movie is entirely complete 6 months before release.
Also damn how long does it take to send an entire movie as an email attachment.
Studios look for gaps where there isn't anything similar to compete with, especially trying to avoid cannibalizing their own releases.
