*Apparently, you can't stop them; you can only hope to contain the bootleggers who continue to put hot product on the streets despite the film industry's reinforced preventive measures on piracy.
A report in the Wall Street Journal calls attention to bootlegged copies of "American Gangster," which opens this Friday starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. But as some folks already know, the film has been available since at least Wednesday at various file-sharing sites on the Internet.
High-quality, crystal-clear DVDs of the film were also being sold for $5 Thursday morning in Los Angeles, the newspaper reported.
For the past few years, the studios appeared to have successfully cracked down on film piracy, with fewer movies appearing on the Internet and street corners before arriving in theaters.
The companies have taken extensive security precautions at prerelease screenings in theaters and have been vigilant about stamping watermarks on other copies of films that circulate in a quest to identify potential pirates.
But early releases are on the upswing again, as evidenced earlier this year by rampant online availability of Pixar's "Ratatouille" 10 days before its official release, as well Weinstein Co.’s "Sicko" and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. ’s "Hostel: Part II." The events show that leaks may be occurring during postproduction, when various vendors working on each film have access to it.
In the case of "American Gangster," the problem is compounded by the excellent quality of the bootleg versions, which appear to be pristine, lacking even the “not-for-distribution” scroll at the bottom of the screen that would identify it as an “early screener.”
Universal officials say they aren’t sure how a copy of the movie leaked.
“There have been no screeners sent out to members of the academy so that’s 100 percent impossible as the cause of how this leaked,” said Michael Moses, a Universal Pictures spokesman.
See related article: RUBY DEE & RZA IN 'AMERICAN GANGSTER'