Outgoing News Corp president and COO Peter Chernin said something pretty surprising on an earnings call today. He mentioned the company estimates that the leaked “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” has been downloaded 4 million-plus times.
If true, that’s far more than some previous estimates of 1 million or so illegal downloads of the Fox superhero pic, which appeared on the Web as an unfinished workprint more than a month before its release in theaters last weekend.
Regardless of whether you believe the leak took a chunk out of the film’s estimated $160 million opening weekend worldwide gross or nudged more people to see it, that’s a huge number of potential customers who sampled a major studio tentpole movie for free.
Meanwhile, the FBI continues to hunt for whoever uploaded the unfinished version of the film. A month into the government’s investigation, no announcements have been made.
