You know how nobody cares about the Wolverine movie because it’s the fourth film in a creatively-exhausted franchise?

Well, guess what? Now people have a brand new, even more exciting reason to ignore Wolverine when it’s released – anyone with a computer can illegally download a high-quality copy of the movie from the internet. A copy of Wolverine has been uploaded to torrent sites a month before release, leaving 20th Century Fox bigwigs fuming.

Luckily for them, though, comic book geeks are notoriously unable to use the internet properly. Wolverine‘s secret lives on to fight another day!

There are basically three groups of people in the world when it comes to Wolverine – the mega-fans who’ll definitely pay to see the spectacle of the finished article at the cinema even if they’ve already watched it online, the casual fans who’ll watch Wolverine on their computers and then ignore the theatrical release, and those who care so little about Wolverine that they won’t download it or see it at the cinema but will dismiss it as rubbish on their sarcastic British-based entertainment blogs as if they were bloody experts on it.

That last one’s us, by the way. Shh.

Anyway, 20th Century Fox had better be hoping that the first group is the biggest of these, because the new Wolverine movie has already been leaked online to a number of torrent sites a month before its release. BBC News reports:

The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video websites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible. Since being uploaded to file sharing websites on Tuesday, more than 75,000 copies of the film have already been downloaded and reviews by users have started appearing online.

Apparently 20th Century Fox are furious about the leak, and are promising to prosecute the person responsible. But it’s Hugh Jackman who we feel most sorry for. His year was going so well – he was named as the world’s sexiest man and some idiot let him goon about like a hyperactive cartoon flamingo while hosting the Oscars – and now this.

Hugh Jackman has invested so much of himself into Wolverine that an online leak will cause him no end of pain. Just by making it available for free, the Wolverine leak automatically hurts the movie’s box office gross, which a) means that Hugh might have to do the unthinkable and agree to star in a sequel to Australia, and b) massively reduces the chances of 20th Century Fox making additional X-Men Origins movies about Vinnie Jones and that blue Frasier thing. Those were the ones we were holding out for, damnit!

On the plus side, it also reduces the chances of Will.i.am making any more films. So that’s something.

As for us, we won’t be downloading the leaked Wolverine print. Not because of ethics or because we think that movies don’t translate as well when viewed on a 10-inch laptop screen on a train. No, the reason that we won’t download Wolverine is because we’ve already seen the Wolverine trailer and, honestly, sitting through two minutes of interminable clenched-faced explosions was enough for us. Two hours of the bastard would probably finish us off.

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