As an unfinished version of Wolverine continues to float around the Internets, Fox Film CEO Tom Rothman says he believes the studio and the FBI are close to finding and apprehending the leaker.
"I have a high level of confidence we'll find out where the lapse in security was and we'll bring the perpetrators to justice," Rothman told Entertainment Weekly.
Fox's post-production business will be scrutinized and possibly altered in the wake of this week's events. "We, like everybody, thought our system was secure," Rothman said. "Just like I'm sure there are lots of banks that get robbed that thought their vault was safe. We thought the post-production pipeline was secure at every juncture. But, obviously, it's self-evident that it wasn't."
While Rothman acknowledged that a leak of a potential summer blockbuster made for millions of dollars is a nightmare scenario, he thinks even those who download the movie illegally will see it in the theaters. He also, once again, emphasizes that the version online is an unfinished, unedited shorter film without many special effects shots and the footage shot in Canada earlier this year and thinks users won't be able to get the full experience on their computers.
That's true, and we hope for the sake of Fox's box-office revenues that the leak won't be too damaging. Still, the movie's already a hit on Bit Torrent. During its first few hours on the file-sharing service, Wolverine was downloaded at least 75,000 times, and Nikki Finke claims the number of downloads is in the hundreds of thousands.
But there is one other, compelling reason why you shouldn't download the film: whoever leaked it broke Hugh Jackman's heart.
"Hugh was heartbroken and hurt when he found out," Rothman said. "He's lived with this thing for 10 years."
You hear that, anonymous Wolverine leaker? You broke Hugh Jackman's heart.