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Hollywood Reckons With A New Wave of Piracy
Blockbuster pillagers // Illustration by Kate Walker
Hollywood is figuring out how to deal with a new era of movie piracy that can quickly spread near-perfect copies of blockbusters on opening weekend… but also fuel the kind of virality that still gets people to show up.
The Big Picture: According to anti-piracy company MUSO and management consulting firm Kearney, piracy now costs the major studios an estimated $75 billion per year… and could reach as high as $125 billion by 2028. That’s a huge deal as Hollywood fights to bring revenues back to pre-pandemic levels.
Behind The Scenes: It’s a long way from people hawking DVDs on street corners.
Social media has become a hotbed for pirated movies, especially on X. Within days of their debuts, The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day were posted on the platform, racking up millions of views in just hours.
But those blockbusters weren’t the only victims — popular movies such as Backrooms, Obsession, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 were also subject to piracy. One studio exec told Variety that “once a movie is out in the world, some piracy is inevitable.”
That’s because smartphones can easily capture and share movies, while new tech like smartglasses is about to make it even easier for pirates to record films.
Additionally, illegal set-top boxes make it possible for people to pirate subscription services.
Final Verdict: Studios, streamers, and the MPA work hand-in-hand to pursue pirates, issuing takedown requests to social platforms and collaborating with online marketplaces to remove illegal streaming devices. But they only have so much bandwidth, so they typically focus on “larger criminal operations enabling these digital pirates,” per Variety.
But there’s another wrinkle — studios tolerate (and sometimes outright encourage) a little piracy, either to make content available in countries where it’s censored or to dial up marketing, per Variety. Case in point: when young audiences filmed themselves losing their minds during a certain scene in Minecraft, Warner Bros. leaned into the online trend to help turn the movie into a Gen Z phenomenon. Surely, the studio’s lawyers lost a little sleep because of that.
Coming Soon: Considering that piracy is a digital issue, some theaters may look to collab on tech that blocks phones from recording once the lights go down.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.