Bad buzz due to the early leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine not doubt hurt the film's bottom line - but the leak of the film could easily have had the opposite effect. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is possibly the worst film in the X-Men franchise, and that's saying a lot when you have a movie as bad as the Brett "For the Love of God Don't Let Him Anywhere Near a Movie Ever Again" Ratner-directed X-Men: Last Stand (a.k.a. X-Men 3, the one where they kill off a bunch of major characters for no good reason and screwed up comic book continuity). Origins is the movie that destroyed the character of Deadpool, for starters, and was so bad that was basically forgotten about in The Wolverine and retconned out of existence in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Studios blamed piracy for the film bombing of course - but the bad word of mouth hurt it more than anything. The workprint of the film that leaked had some unfinished effects, different fonts on the titles and credits, and alternate sound effects (generally temp stuff), but was not significantly different from the finished product, despite the studio's claim that it would be. The fact that the movie was downright terrible spread like wildfire, and the leak of the film came out a full month before the film hit U.S. cinemas. Imagine how, had Gavin Hood produced a good Wolverine movie, things might have been different. Imagine if good word of mouth got around. The producers of Game of Thrones on TV have acknowledged that piracy doesn't even really both them, because they show is such a critical success that people order the Blu-Ray sets and tune to HBO in droves to watch it anyway. Had X-Men Origins: Wolverine been any good, FOX would have saved itself a lot of embarrassment. The film leaking had nothing to do with the fact that it sucked.
Primarily covering the sport of MMA from Ontario, Canada, Jay Anderson has been writing for various publications covering sports, technology, and pop culture since 2001. Jay holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Guelph, and a Certificate in Leadership Skills from Humber College.
