Does Leaks From San Diego Comic-Con Bode Ill For The Future?

So another San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone, and as you can see from our coverage, it was a massive success. But its not all sunshine, with Deadline reporting that leaks of the con exclusive sizzle reels for Suicide Squad and Deadpool haven’t sat well with both Warner Bros. and Fox, as both studios weren’t going to formally release the footage. As a side note, we don’t trade in that sort of footage here, so if you want to see a blurry, god awful version of trailers for two of the most highly anticipated movies of next year, you’ll have to go elsewhere. San Diego Comic-Con usually has good handle on security and lock down all the panels, especially Hall H where all the big boys play, but people still snuck through the cracks (apparently Periscope was out in force this year). Speaking of the Suicide Squad leak, Warner Bros.’ President of Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution Sue Kroll mad this statement, saying, “We have no plans currently to release the Suicide Squad footage that leaked from Hall H on Saturday. It’s unfortunate and ultimately damaging that one individual broke a long-standing trust we have enjoyed with our fans at the convention by posting early material, which, at this point, was not intended for a wider audience. We are still in production on Suicide Squad, and will have a big campaign launch in the future. Our presentation yesterday was designed to be experienced in that room, on those big screens!”. The result of these leaks, according to insiders, could be less exclusive footage been brought in the footage.

This reaction doesn’t really come as a surprise. Quentin Tarantino showed fans eight minutes of The Hateful Eight at the weekend, which has thankfully remained off the Internet. If it had come online, you know the man who almost scrapped the film due to the first draft of the script making its way onto the internet would refuse to bring anything else to future cons, and his subsequent tirade would have songs written about it in the future. The thing about these exclusive sizzle reels is just that, they’re exclusive. They usually come at the end of the production cycle, more often than not when the movie is nowhere near finished, and really act as a taste of what to expect. The VFX is not finished, the colour grading is not quite there, the sound mix isn’t completed, so it’s not a great example of the finished product (Ryan Reynolds has said exactly that about the Deadpool footage, and also says we can expect a trailer to be released to the public in three weeks). What they do is reward the fans who are there with something not a lot of people will see, and, of course, creates buzz that builds the anticipation for when the first footage does come our way through the official channels.

Of course, there was plenty of footage officially into the wild from the event. The new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer probably made a better job of breaking the Internet than Kim Kardashian ever did, and Lucasfilm and Disney hit upon the ingenious idea of releasing magical behind the scenes footage that pushed anticipation for the continuation of the legendary saga to new levels. This was calculated, and really is how the footage should be viewed. No matter how great you think it looks and how pumped you get for the movie, you are still watching it on shitty resolution, projected on a screen with a camera that is properly shaking more than a Michael Bay filmed action scene (we love you really, Michael). It’s gonna affect your opinion. So if you’re at one of these events, calm down, put the phone away, wait a few weeks, and let everybody see it, the way it's meant to be seen. You’ll feel much better for it.