The whole idea of WikiLeaks was a novel thing for the country and the world to face, as suddenly state secrets were being drawn into the unstoppable riptide of internet communication. With the flip of a switch the government was having to consider the implications that nothing, no matter how important, could be kept secret and that lives could even be endangered if identities were revealed or other plans made public. All of which is very serious shit, so the idea of applying that model to Hollywood certainly just matters less, and also isn’t as shocking in the first place. Be that as it may, it is happening, and it may have some implications you wouldn’t immediately consider…
lulzsec pissed off groups like the CIA (though did little real damage). Could a similar group throw major kinks into Hollywood's operations?
On Gawker today, you can find a report about a new group called Hollywood Leaks, an Anonymous/lulzsec style group of hackers that are just now starting to get exposure for stealing scripts from Hollywood and spreading nude pictures of a female rapper (released during the VMAs.) They’ve also been leaking phone numbers of people like Miley Cyrus and Lil John to the public. The group doesn’t seem to have as strong of an identity as, say, Lulzsec but they still seem to have pretty distinct, if still ultimately vague, set of goals.
“We’re currently sitting on several unreleased movie scripts, and enough numbers / emails to keep phones ringing and the inboxes full for the foreseeable future…. We’re simply here to facilitate the free flow of information from a place which was previously over looked, Hollywood.”
What this means is that they’ll be hacking into the email accounts of studio executives, producers, filmmakers, and stars to steal scripts and presumably whatever else they can find, be it concept art, casting lists, schedules, etc. They’ll also be more directly targeting celebrities stupid enough to have incriminating digital files on their phones or in their emails, though smarter ones will also suffer when they open up twitter accounts and cellphone numbers publicly.
I think this could be a (relatively) big deal, and I’ll tell you why, but first of all one does have to acknowledge a few truths…
On the industry side of things, the studios have made fighting the piracy of its product a key concern for years, and spent millions of dollars doing so. On the celebrity side an ecosystem built on leeches, the entire purpose of which is to snap salient pictures of stars doing coke, being racist, or flashing a tit, is simply the way things are. TMZ is only the most recent and efficient incarnation of gossip rags that have profited for decades, and while major production leaks and high-volume digital piracy are a relatively new phenomenon, they’re still well established and understood concerns in showbusiness. So if unwanted exposure is written into the very foundations of modern Hollywood, how could a few hackers even register as that big of a deal? Simply by accelerating the empowering a trend that’s already occurring, using a few new tricks.
For one thing, the application of the anonymous, roving hacker model against Hollywood is something they’ve never quite dealt with before, and these studios haven’t exactly shown themselves as pros when dealing with the internet. And of course we’re plenty used to leaked sex videos from stars and (as I’ve recently bemoaned) we’re growing increasingly used to an utter lack of secrecy from major productions by way of relentless cellphone footage. But for all of the shots of Catwoman and the Tumbler in PA, or the Avengers fighting mo-cap suits in OH that won’t matter in six months, imagine if the full production schedule of one of these films leaked? How would it affect a $200m productions if it was suddenly made public not only exactly where they planned to be months ahead of time, but what they’ll be shooting, what stars will be there, etc. etc. Obviously this isn’t as big of a deal as a CIA operative being made or troop movement being leaked to terrorists, but there’s still a lot of money on the line and lot of ways that too many eager fans knowing too much could screw things up for a production.
This kind of thing is only the beginning.
Beyond that is the easily imagined scenario in wherein Pirate Bay is suddenly host to the Green Lantern 2 production bible with the script, breakdowns, concept art, etc. We’re already at a mass frenzy of breaking down every scrap of minutia that emerges from these films… what happens when they don’t just unlock the doors to the sausage factory, but tear down the walls entirely? And unlike esoteric government files that bury important details amidst hundreds of pages of boring material, this is the kind of crap that draws eyeballs and lights the Facebook crowd on fire, which could in turn attract more and more hackers that want to be the one responsible for leaking the design of the new Dock Ock in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 or whatever.
It’s not really a scary scenario (it’s fucking superheroes and twitter accounts, after all), but it is mildly shocking to think how far it could go. Surely some of this will come to pass as we as a culture spiral further and further into the nightmarish media turbine we’ve created for ourselves. At the very least I have no doubt that within a couple of years there won’t be a single major production that won’t have its script available to download by anyone before it even starts filming. Django Unchained is a recent screenplay that was notoriously easy to get, but it still required a modicum of effort to nab. I think those days will soon be over if these guys make Hollywood hacking the new cool thing. Remember that most of the lulzsec, wikileaks, and other 4chan-style hacking doesn’t require a particularly sophisticated set of skills- a lot of this stuff comes from the exploitation of basic tricks. And yeah, the studios may get nasty or even litigious about certain things, but there’s still much less danger in fucking with Paramount by dropping the M:I 5 script online than there is in dumping a couple top secret files from the CIA. It’s an attention-hungry hacker’s wet dream- the material is sexier, less dangerous, and much easier to get.
And then here we sit… we online film sites. Little shame has been shown by even the most mainstream of sites this year, in regards to running anything and everything that spills out. This is despite vague credos and ethics being debated on twitter by the prominent web personalities ad nauseum. There’s already an infrastructure that’s hungry for the tiniest and deepest of details, even if it’s just a Justice League logo mockup printed in black and white on a “costume department –>” sign. If a wave of hackers decide this is the new cool thing to hack, the online sites will be there to hand them the eyeballs…
I’m VERY interested to hear your take on this, and if you think much will come of it. What kind of future do you envision for movie geeks looking from the outside in? Let me know…
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14 comments
I wonder how Hollywood could possibly combat this; could they keep important documents, like scripts, off of computers and only in the hands of people who need them? Would that even be possible?
I try and avoid nearly all spoilers these days (except for SM and certain other stuff) . My life is better for it since most everything comes as a pleasant surprise. Even if we get more leaks in the future, it won’t change how I watch or enjoy film, since I rarely even see a films official trailer before renting it anyway
PS kind of wish places like BAD ASS DIGEST would hide those leaked images after a jump. I’d really rather not have had ANY of TDKR spoiled like that
With that said….. Info gained through hacking about behind the scenes squabbles ETC I would like to see more of. Stuff like those HUCKABEES or BALE videos were great, and provided an interesting look at the industry
Hollywood is packed full of self-serving, overpaid, greedy dicks. If more of their dirty laundry gets aired in public – so much the better. I’m really not seeing a problem here. As for spoilers – as Princess Kate says, it’s quite straightforward to avoid them. Those who go LOOKING for leaked scripts and then COMPLAIN about it being leaked are fucking idiots.
Dirty laundry? How is a production schedule dirty laundry? How is concept art dirty laundry?
Interestiing article – even if it ignores reality a bit. Most of the naked pictures are intentionally leaked anyway (right around the time the new project drops), celebrities can change their digits, and all the nerds reading all the scripts and mustering all the rage in their socially inept little hearts can’t keep Green Lantern from happening.
But then again, socially inept nerds kept the Jack Black Green Lantern movie from happening, so maybe we will end up just watching a bunch of big budget, color-desaturated Dark Knight-style bullshit after these morons blog about it…
At the same time, if they leak Ke$ha’s digits, I’m IN.
Studios are already fighting this, at least with big productions, but also, I honestly think a lot of people in the industry really don’t care. Getting your hands on concept art or scripts for big movies can be haphazardly difficult (speaking from experience at a movie marketing firm, where we needed a script and the hoops we had to jump through to get… by the time we got it, there was a new script).
But when these things DO become available… they can flow out like a damn flood. Leaks happen, and usually from weird areas. Hacking Christopher Nolan’s e-mail will get you some stuff, sure. But most of it vague (and I doubt anyone is e-mailing him pictures of the bat mobile… that’s the kind of thing you print out and show in person). Hacking into the e-mail of a major post-production facility or marketing firm… it would be a treasure trove. That’s where the Wolverine copy that leaked to the internet came from… a pissed-off, idiot guy in a machine room somewhere. I cannot tell you how many of my friends are sitting in screener copies of unreleased films, either because they were negligently passed-around at firms or they were LITERALLY laying on the ground (I once found a screener copy of Benjamin Button just laying on the lobby floor of my apartment building, and this was before it came out).
Companies will combat this by going more digital, not less, controlling how many hard copies are floating around out there. Post and marketing firms will create tighter controls over this stuff. But, for the most part, even if this stuff leaks, I doubt it’s going to change the game much. Movies rely on advanced publicity… a lot of marketing people LOVE when this shit leaks, even if it’s by mistake.
Now… you want a real area where leaking info can cause damage? Video games. You leak the code of a video game… the whole industry goes fucking nuts.
No one forces you to look at concept art, and most of the movie going public dont visit sites that post them anyway. So I only see upside…studio people shaping up because all eyes are watching now.
How is this still a straight-faced argument? OF COURSE you’re forced to look at the concept art and spy photos. it’s constantly dropped into forums, article previews, and Facebook posts across the web- you can’t avoid them if you’re going to read websites as normal, even if you don’t click on specific articles about them. That’s just how it is and has been for the past few months.
in it for the lulz
And for one bright shining moment I thought applying the Wikileaks model to Hollywood meant we would finally be able to read all those good scripts no-one is producing because the mouth breathers want another TRANSFORMERS / MARVEL superhero / HANGOVER
every
fucking
summer
Instead we’ll get nudies and concept “art” for the new Tim Burton technicolour yawn? The only thing to fear from an information society is that it merely makes people stupider.
There’s no way these guys are elite hackers. The source code of their website has FONT tags in it, for god’s sake.
maybe the FONT is done out of irony…signifying a new breed of hacker: the elite hipster hacker.
God help us all.
Like the piece states, it’s interesting only to see how the industry handles this new-ish incursion of technology, to an already new-tech-fearful industry.
Big picture though, it doesn’t matter; even if scripts, budgets or production schedules leak, really, who cares? They’re movies, not international relations between foreign powers.
This led to the delay of Half-Life 2 if I remember correctly.
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