1. The Hurt Locker
The absolute poster boy for how not to conduct business in Hollywood, and how to alienate fans, The Hurt Locker is a title that was critically acclaimed yet is now publicly reviled in some circles for the way in which the studio behind it conducted its business. First off, the history. Though released in some territories in 2008, by 2009 the film hadn't touched the U.S. market, and upon its release there that year, it became eligible for the 82 annual Academy Awards. Starring Jeremy Renner, and telling the story of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, by the time the awards rolled around, it hadn't even made back its budget. Frankly, no one was really interested in the movie. Critics gave it strong reviews, but it was panned by those with actual military experience for the most part. Not making money back theatrically is not unusual for smaller movies. They're looking for home video sales to make the difference, plus award nominations. The boost in ticket sales from being nominated by the Oscar's can be huge, and the Hurt Locker lucked out in that regard, so the film was looking at an up-tick in sales once the nominations came out. The fact that it went on to win Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay greatly boosted its profile - but it was still far from a box office smash. In the end, it would make back more than triple its $15 million budget - an admirable take for a small film. On top of that, it would pull in another $30 million in home video sales. However, producers weren't satisfied. They blamed piracy for the failure of a movie with limited appeal (American-made war movies don't draw overseas, and in 2009 the U.S. was already weary of anything to do with the Iraq war). Clearly, they argued, it wasn't the quality of the film - look how many awards it had won! And so piracy was once again to blame, and Voltage Pictures, forever damning their name in the eyes of movie geeks, decided to sue people who had downloaded the movie - by the thousands. These sorts of bulk cases had been primarily the domain of music companies in the past, and feature strong arm tactics and "settlement hotlines" - in essence, a firm representing the studio contacts an alleged copyright infringer, scares them with big numbers (movie and music companies have been known to ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages against defendants accused of downloading a single work), then directs them to call a settlement hotline where they can agree to pay a much smaller fee (usually in the thousands). In the U.S. this is somehow legal, though it would be considered blackmail in other nations, and either way is an abuse of the legal system. In the case of Voltage Pictures, they demanded $1,500 from each of 5,000 bit torrent users accused of downloading the movie, and when they met resistance, they expanded their campaign to other countries, including Canada, where their demand to uncover subscriber information from ISPs actually led to changes in Canadian copyright law (downloading movies, and making them available to download, had for a long time been kosher given a legal loophole in the country due to taxes paid on blank media that are turned over to the entertainment industry to offset the perceived costs of piracy). It got messier. The problem with these sorts of lawsuits are that innocent people often get caught in the crossfire and are scared into paying - after all, generally speaking all that studios have in the way of evidence is an IP address. Happen to have open Wifi, or a weak security implementation on your router? Well, you might just find yourself sued. Nicolas Chartier, head of Voltage Pictures, who had actually been banned by the Oscars for trying to petition for votes (a big no-no), made things much worse for himself: after fans began threatening to boycott the company's offerings (we know of several examples of this), and one particular fan e-mailed Chartier to say he'd boycott Voltage til the campaign was dropped, Chartier replied calling the fan a moron, and stating that he hoped his family and kids (Chartier, not the brightest, appeared to be unaware that one's family usually includes their kids) wound up in jail. And that he was stupid. Amongst other insults. Chartier had created a public relations nightmare, and his company's image has never recovered. Voltage did have success thanks to Dallas Buyer's Club last year, but little else in their repertoire really stands out outside The Hurt Locker. As recently as this Spring they were still attempting to make a buck via copyright lawsuits, though in 2013 they had 615 of their cases thrown out of court in a single fell swoop. They've changed tactics as a result, suing smaller numbers of people (six, in a recent example in Oregon) but going after more money from each. Like many copyright trolls before them, their effort to turn a profit by taking advantage of the legal system simply tarnished their image permanently (we're looking at you, Metallica).