In an age of social media and pocket phones capable of documenting our caloric intake and scanning our fingerprints, it shouldn’t be a surprise that events like San Diego Comic Con inevitably become a source of mass leaks of raw, supposedly exclusive footage. This very kind of leak is exactly what happened with Suicide Squad, Deadpool and X-Men: Apocalypse a couple of weeks ago.
It would be easy to surmise that this digital reality might eventually be embarrassed by studios as a cheap form of marketing. Let the ravenous fans do all the work and the marketing budget can be slashed and directed into other expenses. You almost have to wonder if it’s intentional that the studios let this happen. It was this topic that was posed to Apocalypse producer, Hutch Parker, in a sit down with Slash Film. For what it’s worth, Parker denies the tactic by stating, I’d say it really isn’t intended to be leaked. It’s really intended to excite a core. From a marketing perspective, what they want is to share it with the most discerning eyes that are out there for this material. It’s the biggest and probably most intense focus group any of us ever have.”
Unless the convention circuits are going to start utilizing some sort of targeted EMP device to keep cell phones from capturing footage, the leaks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and while Parker’s argument that leaked footage can make audiences lose interest in a project, the leaks that came out of SDCC seemed to have the opposite effect by whipping fans into a tizzy and giving them something to talk about.
Not to mention, it’s also how we got a Deadpool movie to begin with.
