"The Hateful 8" and "Revenant" were scheduled to hit the big screens on Dec. 25, Christmas Day. However, screener copies of the two movies and several more movies were leaked online and are being downloaded at tremendous rates.
It is normal for screener copies for Oscar nominated films to be sent out to voters for review purposes, but it is not usual for these movies to leak out. There are several movies that are currently being downloaded which are soon to be released. They are "The Hateful 8," "Joy," "Steve Jobs," "Carol," " Room," " Legend," "In the Heart of the Sea," and "Brooklyn," Variety reported.
According to the report, Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Revenant" has been downloaded by 739,580 unique IP addresses within a 24-hour period. Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" has 569,153 IP addresses with the same time period. Last year, Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" script was leaked online.
A group called Hive-CM8 took the credit on these movie leaks and they promised that there will be more. The group even posted a message up to let its fans know that it is just one of many. "DVDScreener 1 of 40. Will do them all one after each other, started with the hottest title of this year, the rest will follow," stated the group.
Most pirated copies come from DVD and Blu-ray disc, but this time of the year, during the "Oscar season," many pirated content are coming from screener copies, Torrent Freak stated.
These screener copies are of very good quality. Some do contain watermarks, from the companies that produced them. One comment about "The Hateful Eight" copy was "extremely clean and free from time stamps."
HBO changed its way in sending out screener copies due to reasons like this. HBO is currently using a "streaming-only policy" because of the incident that involved the "Game of Thrones" season premiere.
