13 Pre-Release Oscar Films Leaked on Torrent Sites
In an unprecedented turn of events, torrent sites have been hit with a recent flood of official Oscar nominated movies, some exceeding the most downloads within 24 hours of their initial release. The release of the thirteen films have flooded torrent sites, with some Oscar films reaching over half a million downloads in its first 24 hours.
In a bizarre turn of events, 13 pre-release Oscar films hit the Internet last night with staggering quality.
Many early releases of media and movies on the Internet commonly comes from a movie theater, where an individual will setup a camera or homemade rig to record the movie on film and upload it online later. Many will download the film in whats referred to as a cam release, but few will be happy with the quality. As many say, nothing beats a digital copy of the actual film.
Filling the cam quality and digital copy gap are DVD screeners, copies of the films mailed to critics, award voters, reviewer’s among limited others. DVD Screeners often come in DVD format and according to one source, are heavily monitored with who the movies are sent to and subject to intensive security procedures.
Despite the intensive security procedures, someone is bound to get their hands on the films and upload them on a torrent site for millions to download. The past few months have been key for downloaders, with the Sony Pictures hack leaking numerous movies before they even made it to theaters.
In the past 24 hours, thirteen big name movie titles have been leaked online, all in DVD screener format, from apparent sources within the DVD screening industry.
The thirteen Oscar nominee leaked film titles are (in no specific order):
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
- Inherent Vice
- The Gambler
- A Most Violent Year
- Kill The Messenger
- Birdman
- Selma
- American Sniper
- Big Hero 6
- Into the Woods
- Big Eyes
- Unbroken
- The Imitation Game
Proving to be the most popular was “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, accumulating over half a million downloads in just under 24 hours, according to TorrentFreak.
The DVD screeners were not released in normal format by known scene groups, all titles were originally released with no titles or known scene groups behind them. Since, many scene groups have taken and re-encoded the titles under their group name, leaving many copies to now be downloaded.
Several rival groups including EVO, CM8, TiTAN, Ozlem, RAV3N, and several others have since added their tags to the titles. Despite the number of versions now online, TorrentFreak insiders have been told there is only one true source for the movies, which continues to remain unknown, but speculation that CM8 is the culprit remains high. According to comments made by the CM8 group, a substantial amount of time went into removing security watermarks from Peter Jackson’s latest leaked film.
“Movie had watermarks visible and invisible ones, had to remove frames to get rid of them,” CM8 wrote in the description. “Nothing I haven’t done before, It was hours of work, but its finally done and here for you to get!”
As Oscar predictions remain high, Indiwire published their latest 2015 prediction list for Best pictures, which included Birdman, a Michael Keaton and Zach Galifianakis film, along with The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. Both films were leaked online yesterday as well.
Also found in their ‘Best Picture’ group was Selma, a chronicle of Martin Luther King’s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. Paramount was said to have sent DVD screeners of the movie to Academy voters back in December, yet the movie was just leaked yesterday.
Also in battle for Oscar glory is Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, and Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, which were both leaked yesterday as well.
And to top off the screeners, Disney’s big titles making their debut online were: Big Hero 6, Into the Woods, and Big Eyes.
According to TorrentFreak sources who wished to remain anonymous, nine of the leaked titles came from three different sources. One took credit for the Hobbit, another for Big Hero 6, and the other seven came from one single source. According to the anonymous source, they described the enocding on the seven separate films as “choppy,” suggesting the leaker may be not be an experienced pirate.
Four other films came out within the time of writing this article, but to who the original source is remains unknown.
As the titles came in small spurts, it remains unknown if more Oscar nominated titles will appear in the coming hours.
