Bootleggers!

From dark horizons, June is turning out to be a big month for early movie leaks onto torrenting systems.Most US releases are available for download within a week of their cinematic releases on various popular torrent sites, but this month has seen three major films pop up about a week BEFORE their theatrical release.

First came a near DVD quality working print of "Hostel: Part II". Despite some blurring and a temp track score, the film was otherwise complete and the leak got director Eli Roth hopping mad, blaming it for the financial failure of the film (rather than a far more likely host of other reasons).

Then came "Sicko", Michael Moore's documentary on the health care system. This video was a direct rip from a DVD screener and the finished film to boot, which of course has made troubled distributor The Weinstein Company hopping mad - Moore himself though is unplussed.

Now the Disney/Pixar collaboration "Ratatouille" has hit the online sites. Unlike the other two however, this is one of those 'shot with a camera inside a dark cinema' deals which yields a blurry, indistinct and frankly god awful image and sound quality.

Disney will no doubt be pissed about this, as they deserve to be, but the film targets a very different audience than the young male demographic that predominantly uses torrent sites - and even amongst those, a Pixar film is something they'd go out and see (if it had been a DVD quality copy however, then it'd be a different story). Plus with previews last weekend, it's expected this film will be the least impacted by such a leak.