Well well well, oh Corporate Lawyers sweeping through the internet with nervous twitches and Law Degrees. Comic Book Movie last night posted a bunch of spoilers from a leaked copy of Paramounts Thor script. The Studios then unleashed their Lawyers who within one hour threatened CBM with law suits. Cinemablend did a bit of investigating and discovered "that in addition to forcing them [CBM] to remove the script Paramount then pressured them to also remove comments left by people about the script. Additionally, the site says they received correspondence from a Marvel rep trying to get CBM owner and reporter Jim Littler to reveal the script's source."
Part of the spoilers CBM posted:
"The script itself is pretty epic, The writer captured the essence of every character perfectly. The arrogance of Thor, the trickery of Loki, the vanity of Fandral, the lovable and ever so hungry nature of Volstagg, the broodiness of Hogun, the courage of Sif, and the godliness of Odin. The script was definitely written by someone who is a fan of these characters and knows them well. There is no way anyone will be disappointed by the characterizations of these characters."
Now one would wish that a major studios like Paramount spent as much time focused on preventing script leaks from within their own corporate walls as much as they spend time intimidating and ordering news sites to remove reviews and so forth. I am not even convinced that a leaked script actually damages in any way upcoming Movies, by the time merchandising info has been sent out to companies for character toy design and marketing P.R firms receive production criteria info inevitably leaks, thats not opinion thats a fact. For a film like Thor there will obviously be elements the Studios will want to protect, characters and villain cameos and so forth. As somebody who has worked within the Industry it makes a lot more sense for studios to be over-protective when a script is pre green-lit. But the tides are turning recently we discovered stories such as Deadpool's leaked script which flashed around the internet in a matter of hours, it was everywhere and resulted in one housewife and struggling screenwriter Patricia McIlvaine being sued by Fox for $15 million dollars because she was traceable and hosted a copy of the leaked script in pdf form on a personal account. So Fox sent their people to her actual home. Absolutely ridiculous. I liked Fox I have even worked with them but in matters like this Fox needs to sort out their s**t, and their security. Thor is coming, we know that. But to hold a balanced debate copyright must be respected. A writers integrity, their work is tantamount and if the rights to that work is purchased then it belongs to that entity. Scriptflags gets sent a lot of scripts every week, real and fake and we have been sent a copy of the leaked Thor script, will I read it, probably. Will I review it.. probably not. There is enough info/ Spoilers out there already and if you want to learn more about Thor pick up a comic. We are in an area of transition thats for sure, Piracy has hit the Industry very hard. Thats why we have the advent of 3D which inadvertently hinders Piracy "ripping" in cinemas. But there will almost always be a black market, or a grey area which studios like Warner seem to be coming to understand has actual benefits.
