Disney will certainly be quite happy to have this much free advertising for a movie that is going to start being shown in cinemas in a few days.<p>It's hilarious to claim that the leak of Expendables 3 was the reason it flopped on the big screen. But of course, if I were responsible for the movie, I would clutch at any straw possible.
I wonder if the pirates think that this will really do anything. The people that were already going to pirate it, are going to pirate it, but now they can get a better source earlier. This isn't going to really affect people going to the movies to see it though; most people who pirate wouldn't have seen it in theaters anyway, and those that now know you can probably won't.<p>You can only ransom something if that something has value to the ransomee. I'm not a Disney exec, but I don't really think threatening to leak the movie has much value.
I don't buy it.<p>Watching a big-budget movie in a theater and watching a pirated version are two activities so dissimilar as not to affect each other at all.<p>If we were talking about Netflix shows, or DVD releases, then maybe piracy would impact the sales, but a big Disney movie? Nah.<p>These pirates are either stupid, or non-existent and created by Disney itself.
The irony of pirates/thieves leveraging the populations interest in pirates/thieves in order to siphon money out of the most dangerous mental pirate of them all - the behemoth that programs (and compromises) the minds of children to dream of being a prince or princess, to elevate the self above others.