Somewhere in the world at this time Sylvester Stallone is pissed. Elsewhere, a recently fired Lionsgate employee is crying into a pillow about creating an error that may have cost the long-lasting studio tens of millions in lost profits.
Wednesday night, a DVD-quality copy of the upcoming movie Expendables 3 leaked online more than 3 weeks ahead of the film’s official release date. According to Variety, the pirated film continues to be downloaded via piracy sites greater than 189,000 times over a 24-hour period.
The leak began to spread like wildfire Thursday afternoon, which is at about the time most of the biggest piracy blogs started to feature the show. Using more than twenty days to go before the flick’s August 15 release it is likely the number of downloads will soar into the millions before Lionsgate includes a chance to recoup the film’s reported $90 billion dollar budget.
The Expendables 3 is the sequel to the 2012 action flick The Expendables 2. The plot centers around a mercenary group that becomes the target of one of its original co-founders, Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson).
The movie’s ensemble cast includes Antonio Banderas, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Harrison Ford, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Kelsey Grammar, Ronda Rousey, Terry Crews and Wesley Snipes.
The original source of the leaked material currently remains unknown, although TorrentFreak states that among the first copies was uploaded with a user called Drarbg. This username seems to be present on a number of popular file-sharing websites, such as the Pirate Bay.