A quick update on this unfortunate situation before the weekend.
We told you last week that buyers were understandably fuming about Amazon‘s unintentional leak before its theatrical run of the Jason Statham action movie Mutiny.
Since then, the mutiny has seemingly been quelled, but buyers are still deeply frustrated and many are hoping that Amazon does what’s described to us as “the good-faith thing” by offering some kind of compensation for the leak.
The $50 million movie has now opened in most territories. Buyers we’ve spoken to in multiple markets are disappointed with returns; multiple have told us that the film hasn’t performed where they thought it would. Last weekend’s U.S. take didn’t get to $8M. The UK only mustered $500,000. There were other soft openings. Its current box office gross currently stands at around $16M global.
There are a number of potential reasons for this, including the incredible staying power of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. Maybe Statham stans just didn’t fancy this one. It’s possible. One potential reason is also piracy.
We’ve been sent multiple examples of the movie being pirated online. According to anti-piracy site Torrentfreak, the movie is the most pirated of the week.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” one person close to the movie told us. “It’s very rare to get a 4K fully mixed version of a film online. It’s usually a bad recorded camera version. The box office is certainly a bad surprise. This film had similar metrics to other successful Statham movies but it’s running at half or less of the box office.”
“None of this is scientific,” a buyer admitted to us. “But there’s no way the leak cost people zero. It’s hard to know if it cost hundreds of dollars or millions in each territory but it’s clearly being streamed globally. Lionsgate has been trying to take the movie down from a number of sites. The hope is there’s something offered by Amazon to buyers to make this pill easier to swallow.”
How much could be offered and to who? It’s hard to say. Amazon declined comment for this piece. As did the producers and Lionsgate.
“There has been a lot of finger-pointing,” one overseas buyer said of the mood this week. “What Amazon did was totally unacceptable. But no one is taking a lead on it internationally. And these things are so hard to quantify. There could also be other factors at play.”
Statham is understood to be among those disappointed by the leak and its potential effect. Lionsgate is understood to be in talks with Amazon about next steps and is continuing to assess the impact.
The picture is expected to be become a little clearer once Premium VOD numbers emerge in coming weeks. In the meantime, there’s seemingly little appetite for litigation. According to lawyers who have been consulted by interested parties, the contractual chain of title on the project apparently means that international buyers would have to sue the producers, who in turn would have to sue Amazon. No one is keen to do anything like that from what we can glean. Ultimately, these are all parties who work together frequently and who generally have good relationships and need each other. It was a bad mistake, but one made in genuine error.
“It was a f*ck-up and it sucks. To say it had no impact on the box office is pie in the sky,” one buyer claimed to us. “Ultimately, we just hope Amazon does the right thing by its partners.”
