Michael Moore's 'Sicko' Is Pirated
A copy of
Michael Moore's
Sicko, apparently spirited out of the United States and into Canada in order to avoid the possibility of its being confiscated by U.S. authorities, has turned up on the Internet on peer-to-peer content sites.
Advertising Age commented on its website today (Monday): "Moore, and his distributor, The Weinstein Company, have every film maker's worst marketing nightmare on their hands -- how to persuade people to go to the theater to see a show that's available free on the Internet." Some analysts observed, however, that Moore's previous film,
Fahrenheit 9/11, was also widely bootlegged but nevertheless went on to gross $119 million domestically. Meanwhile, director
Eli Roth is complaining on his MySpace page that piracy did in his latest movie,
Hostel Part II. Roth has written that "a stolen workprint" was uploaded before the release "and is really hurting us." He predicted: "Piracy will be the death of the film industry, as it killed the music industry, and while it makes a smaller dent in huge movies like
Spider Man 3, it really hurts films like mine, which have far less of an advertising and production budget." Roth further charged that some critics -- he declined to name them -- actually reviewed the pirated copy. "I know who they are, as do the studios, and other filmmakers," he said, "and they will no longer have any access to any of my films."