Post a Comment On: Horrorthon

[Image]From dark horizons, Maybe one delay was too many it seems for the controversial horror flick "Captivity". Pushed back from May to June 22nd, and then again to July 13th - the Elisha Cuthbert-led fright flick has become the fourth film this month to see itself leak onto the Internet's file torrenting systems - just over two weeks before its US theatrical release.

In recent weeks a DVD workprint of Eli Roth's "Hostel: Part II" and a DVD screener of Michael Moore's "Sicko" leaked online. A few days ago a 'CAM' release - films that have been captured by someone taking a camcorder into a movie theatre and filming the movie - popped up for Disney & Pixar's next flick "Ratatouille" which opens tomorrow. Yesterday however saw a 'CAM' release of "Captivity" hit the networking sites. Dark and blurry to be on the verge of near unwatchable for all but the most desperate - judging from example screen captures that have popped up online - it makes one wonder how the studios will react to this. When "Hostel: Part II" opened soft to $8.2 million, director Eli Roth screamed bloody murder about the leak (considering what got leaked he has every right), but then blamed the failed opening entirely on the piracy rather than more likely factors of bad scheduling, studio co-production politics and poor word-of-mouth and critical reviews. Michael Moore on the other hand was indifferent about the leak of his film, and its stellar box-office performance in limited release last weekend shows that it's unlikely to have much of an impact. Indeed with both it and "Ratatouille" hitting wide this week, it'll be interesting to see how they perform and what potential failure might be ascribed to piracy.The leak of "Captivity" isn't a huge surprise though considering that the film has opened in international territories already, most notably the UK. Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller "Sunshine", which also opened in a similar international-first pattern, has already seen a DVD quality available on torrenting sites for months now despite the film not opening States-side til mid-July.