On the morning before its theatrical release on Friday, July 31st, a full-length, high-quality pirated copy of Spider-Man: Brand New Day leaked and was posted directly onto the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). The leaked copy of the film was uploaded to X by an account named “Frederick Bryan” at around 6 AM PT and stayed online for approximately 9 hours before being taken down. In that time, 5.9 million accounts viewed the post, accumulating over 143,000 likes and 10,000 reposts (previously called retweets).
A similar event occurred last weekend, when a leaked high-quality copy of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey was uploaded to X, receiving millions of views before being taken down by Universal. Such leaks are made possible by an added feature for X Premium users, which allows high-quality video uploads up to four hours long.
Despite the millions of views the leaked version of Brand New Day received, it did not hinder the film’s theatrical performance. The film has been shattering records this weekend, garnering a historic $72 million in preview sales, surpassing Avengers: Endgame’s $60 million to become the biggest single-day opening in box office history. These numbers show that, despite pirated copies of movies becoming increasingly accessible, audiences are still flocking to theaters to see these new releases on the big screen, where they are designed to be watched.
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