As I’m betting you’ve heard by now, an unfinished cut of the film leaked online and now millions have downloaded it a month before its scheduled release.
This would be the point where Serenity’s Mr. Universe would say, “They can’t stop the signal.”

Photo Credit: Michael Muller / TM and © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

It gets better. Fox News, another component of the company trying to save its summer tentpole, fired a columnist that reviewed the unfinished product. Even more baffling is that Roger Friedman gave the leaked copy a good review.

Your average screenwriter couldn’t conceive anything this wild. At the core of it are some fascinating issues the entertainment industry has to face sooner rather than later. It’s becoming easier to download movies from the Web and harder for the companies making those movies to plug the leaks.

One of the reasons Fox believes this leak has to be an inside job is the quality  of it. This isn’t one of those grainy, I’m-not-even-sure-that’s Hugh-Jackman-on-screen jobs here. If they can’t find the leak to unleash the full force of Fox’s fury, the only person who’s going to get punished here is Friedman.

I think all of us who write about entertainment for a living should be a little nervous here. This guy got fired for breaking news, which I kind of thought was the point of our job. It’s not as if he pirated the thing himself, or talked about anything that’s a secret. Wolverine’s been downloaded more times than the Paris Hilton tape . He did the right thing giving his take on something that millions of people are viewing now, legal or not. It would have been insulting to readers just to keep spitting out previews and “won’t this be cool” features as if nobody had seen this thing.

There are a lot of fascinating questions that we won’t have the answers to for a month. Will this hurt Wolverine’s box office? How much?

There are also questions that right now no one may have the answers to. What will studios do to prevent this from happening again? Will we see a day in the next 15-20 years where most movies debut online and not in theaters?

X-Men Origins:Wolverine isn’t just a movie anymore. It’s one of the movie industry’s biggest news stories and will continue to be. This is no longer just a summer popcorn movie in a successful film franchise. It’s going to be the litmus test for whether an event movie is still an event if it got leaked. We know the system can be compromised and it will happen to someone else. It may not happen at 20th Century Fox, where they will now probably start hiring Secret Service to guard these projects. But somebody will get hacked and some other movie will hit the Net weeks before its actual release.

If I had to hazard a guess regarding the question that 20th Century Fox is most concerned with, I bet this movie will still make tons of money. Now even the people that have seen the pirated copy will want to see the finished product. 20th Century Fox has also gotten publicity they couldn’t have bought. The infamous leak has taken the story from the entertainment pages to the technology pages and front pages of many sites and print publications. Or to put it in comic book context, nothing can kill Wolverine.

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If the time-honored comic book question of Who Watches The Watchmen is asked, the answer could turn out to be: No one will, at least not anytime soon. One of the most hotly anticipated films of 2009 is in release limbo after a U.S. District Court judge has ruled that 20th Century Fox has the right to distribute the film.

The problem there is that Warner Bros. is the company planning to release the movie in March. E! Online reports that Fox sued Warner in February, alleging Warner hadn’t obtained all the rights from producer Lawrence Gordon. Judge Gary Feess agrees and now the pressure is on Warner to hash something out with Fox before one of the most hyped films of the year misses its target date.

Watchmen, a limited series written by legendary comic scribe Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?) is one of the most acclaimed books in history. Moore uses characters similar to modern superhero archetypes to deconstruct the superhero. In Watchmen’s mythos, superheroes have been outlawed and the ones still working are on the government’s payroll. With no costumed supervillains, Watchmen is a completely different work.

It may well have taken an era in which every comic book that’s ever sold more than 10 copies seems to be in development to get Watchmen rolling. The movie has had a long, winding road to development and this latest twist has more fans wondering if they will ever “watch the Watchmen.”

Knowing the pressures Warner is under, Feess suggested the two parties might want to work toward a resolution. Fox holds most of the cards here as they’re not the studio counting on Watchmen to kick off a big movie season.

One of the worst things that could happen to Watchmen would be a delay pushing it into an already crowded summer of movies including a new Star Trek film and Wolverine:Origins.

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