At the time of writing the film is also topping The Pirate Bay’s Top 100 most popular torrents and is listed among the most popular search terms on other torrent sites.

In an attempt to keep the damage to a minimum, Fox has been sending out takedown notices to various torrent sites. Most site operators are kind enough to take down the links, but new ones are already uploaded before the requests are processed.

Interestingly, most people think that the leak will actually do the movie good, as a poll among our readers indicates that 40% would be more excited to see it in the movie theater or on DVD, even if they had downloaded it. Only 6% of the respondents believe that the leak will be detrimental to the film’s success.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

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Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

20th Century Fox wasn’t happy with this global sneak preview and asked the FBI and MPAA to investigate the case. On Friday it was rumored that an FBI investigation led to a raid on a Dallas data center, but this turned out not to be true. The leak has already cost one Fox news reporter his job. He posted a review of the downloaded movie online and although he loved it, Fox didn’t and he was fired.

What we want to find out with this week’s regular Sunday poll is whether you feel the leak will end up hurting the success of the movie in the long run – or not. It will, if those who have downloaded the film don’t end up seeing it in the movie theater or on DVD, having originally planned to do so. The flip side is that the leak and the associated widespread press coverage could be serving as a useful promotional tool. Those who’ve seen it might become even more curious about the final product, recommended it to others or even take a few friends along to the theater with them.

We’d like to know what you think. How would you respond, IF you had downloaded a copy?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This is the reality today with Fox’s ‘upcoming’ X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it’s spreading with determination on BitTorrent. At the time of writing there are at least three different ‘workprint’ versions, presumably from the same source. One is reported to be a few minutes longer than the others but all are missing special effects. The film, penned for a May 1 2009 release, was due to compete alongside the likes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek in this year’s summer blockbuster campaigns but has ‘premiered’ a little earlier than planned.

Here at TorrentFreak we’ve been monitoring this leak and since the movie hit BitTorrent just a few hours ago it has been downloaded at least 75,000 times, a rate comparable to that of the DVDrip ‘release’ of The Dark Knight. Interest is likely to be significant. X-Men’s target audience are tech-savvy people who are likely to have heard about BitTorrent. Multiply this by the desire to see something unusual and something you’re not supposed to have (like an unfinished Hollywood sci-fi movie) and things got hot – quickly.

The leak is the source of much speculation, but one particularly interesting discussion surrounds the source of the leak of this ‘workprint’ copy. Many early ‘reviewers’ of the movie noted that not only was the video and audio of a high quality (screenshots), but there were no ‘watermarks’. This is not strictly true. A little way into the movie from the top of the screen pops a very brief message which names Rising Sun Pictures and a date, 2nd March 2009.

Founded in 1995, Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) is an Australian visual effects company which has previously worked on the Harry Potter, Superman and Batman movies, so they have quite a pedigree. Of course RSP would absolutely not endorse any leak and the leak could have happened before the print even reached them, but somehow a print marked with their company name has made it onto the Internet and the downloads are mounting quickly.

Another interesting development is that Devin Faraci over at Chud.com said that he’d been told that the Wolverine DVD had been “switching hands” over the last couple of weeks.

TorrentFreak contacted Rising Sun Pictures but as yet we’ve had no response.

Update: Fox has released a statement confirming the leak. The FBI and MPAA are investigating the case.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.