5 Movie Flops That Blamed Piracy

4. The Hulk

Ang Lee's version of The Hulk (2003) saw an incomplete workprint of the movie leak online - a copy of the film that featured unfinished special effects including the Hulk not being fully finished, and missing pants in some scenes. So of course, piracy was to blame for the film flopping, right? And despite a worldwide take of over $200 million dollars, make no mistake - this film was a bomb. Until recent years, that leak - which took place weeks before the film's intended release - was considered the biggest film leak in Hollywood history. A couple of important facts: one, given it was an unfinished copy of the movie, it was clearly leaked by someone inside the production. A mole, if you will. Groups that specialize in piracy (who generally do it for bragging rights, as there's no money involved in most cases) love insiders like this. So to some extent, Hollywood had themselves to blame (this is not the only time this has happened). Second, the movie just wasn't very good. And there's the real problem. When movie studios decried the piracy of The Hulk and the industry blamed its perceived failure as a result of its leak online, they were right - for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't that people were downloading The Hulk instead of going to see it in theatres, it's that due to poor reviews from nearly everyone who had seen the film, most notably comic book fans who watched the leaked copy early, the word of mouth for the film was terrible, and no one wanted to spend the money to see it. Ain't It Cool News, at the time the be-all and end-all of movie news sites, slammed the film, with Moriaty (Drew McWeeny, who now runs HitFlix) stating that the Hulk in that print of the film simply wasn't believable. Major publications such as People Magazine then picked up the story, quoting the AICN story. Had Ang Lee made the movie comic book fans wanted, things might have ended different. What was so bad about The Hulk? For one, there was very little smashing in the movie; it focused on the human elements of the character, something that shouldn't have been surprising given it was directed by Ang Lee. It was dull in places, and while it wasn't particularly bad, when it did try to go comic-y it too often got it wrong (think about the Hulked out dogs, for example). Even without the piracy of the movie, this likely would have been the case. The Hulk just wasn't the movie fans wanted. Take this tidbit posted on StraightDope back in 2003 before the movie leaked: "The Hulk himself looks like someone took a bag of jello and beat it against a ceiling fan." - skaterboarder87 A quick Google search of the film back then will lead you to plenty of fans hemming and hawing about the flick leading up to its release, and after word got out - well it was just a disaster. The movie had a $60 million opening, but died off quickly in subsequent weeks.