The newest superhero blockbuster, “Deadpool,” is a certified hit, having racked up more than $500 million at the worldwide box office after only two weekends. But prior to its release, the script was in limbo for many years. The prospects of the movie’s production weren’t looking promising—that is, until test footage leaked on the Internet, sparking strong positive reactions from comic book fans and spurring Fox into action. As damaging as copyright infringement may be to the movie industry, Fox may owe its latest Deadpool hit to the footage’s illegal release. Ryan Reynolds talked about the film’s long-awaited release on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week, and he emphasized how, first, the script’s leak and then, second, the test footage’s release helped move the process along.

“I’ve been trying to get it made for 11 years, which is crazy,” Reynolds said. “We developed the script six years ago, wrote this fantastic script, it leaked online, Deadpool fans went nuts for it, so the studio granted us a small amount of money to make test footage. This test footage that we shot then sat on the shelf for four years, as it does, they didn’t do anything with it, then just a little under two years ago it leaked, accidentally, onto the internet.”

Reynolds hinted, however, that the test footage’s release may not have been so accidental.

“I know that one of us did it,” Reynolds said. “There’s four of us: me, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Tim Miller the director. We all said at the beginning that someone should leak it, so the idea was planted, but I’m 70 percent sure it wasn’t me.”

Wernick, one of the film’s writers, agreed with Reynolds’ assessment.

“Had it not gotten that reaction, it would have been a disaster and the project would have been dead,” Wernick said. “We knew it in our bones this would be the reaction. We were thrilled and still to this day don’t know who did it. There is a very short list of suspects.”

Shortly after the leak, Fox successfully had the footage removed from most websites on copyright infringement grounds. But even the studio might admit that in retrospect the leak might not have been such a bad thing. On a relatively small $58 million budget, “Deadpool” has already made money and earned rave reviews in the process.

Sources: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160213/14345433596/without-copyright-infringement-deadpool-doesnt-get-made.shtmlhttp://www.ew.com/article/2016/02/10/deadpool-ryan-reynolds-leaked-footagehttp://www.fashionnstyle.com/articles/23735/20140808/deadpool-movie-ryan-reynolds-getting-made-guardians-of-the-galaxy-writer-tweets-campaign-fox-to-produce-x-men-spinoff.htm

For more information on this topic, please visit our Copyright Infringement Defense service page, which is part of our Software & Copyrights practice.

Klemchuk LLP is an Intellectual Property (IP), Technology, Internet, and Business law firm located in Dallas, TX. The firm offers comprehensive legal services including litigation and enforcement of all forms of IP as well as registration and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights. The firm also provides a wide range of technology, Internet, e-commerce, and business services including business planning, formation, and financing, mergers and acquisitions, business litigation, data privacy, and domain name dispute resolution. Additional information about the copyright law firm and its copyright attorneys may be found at www.klemchuk.com.

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