Warner Brothers, y u no be happy?

Each year at one of the many events we attend we are shown exclusive things. Things I believe the makers or manufacturers of said things would love for the masses to see. After all, what’s the point of showing the thing to the many people that are attending a massive event other than to be seen, and hopefully generate excitement for your project?

Of course every time we go to E3, CES, SDCC, or any other event, we’re going as Press, and I’ve never seen a vendor, creator, or investor upset that they were getting to show their product, device, software, or film to more people.

Now lets talk about Warner Brothers for a moment. They are releasing DC’s Suicide Squad soon, and they genuinely seem rather upset that their trailer has somehow made it to the internet, not just Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center. I know, it’s hard to believe that when more than 130,000 people carrying personal recording devices on them, that somehow it was recorded and uploaded to the internet. The gall.

Something similar happened to Marvel last year. Their response was:

Dammit, Hydra.

— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) October 22, 2014

Hydra being the bad-guy organization in the Marvel Universe. Hydra must have leaked some low-quality footage, so Marvel turns around and releases the high-quality footage so you can be just as excited as you were. Only now in High Definition: Who doesn’t like HiDef excitement?

Warner Bros has a different take on this:

“Warner Bros. Pictures and our anti-piracy team have worked tirelessly over the last 48 hours to contain the Suicide Squad footage that was pirated from Hall H on Saturday,” said Sue Kroll, president of worldwide marketing and international distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures. “We have been unable to achieve that goal. Today we will release the same footage that has been illegally circulating on the web, in the form it was created and high quality with which it was intended to be enjoyed. We regret this decision as it was our intention to keep the footage as a unique experience for the Comic Con crowd, but we cannot continue to allow the film to be represented by the poor quality of the pirated footage stolen from our presentation.”

You’ll notice a slight difference in tone from Marvel. In this version of hyping the audience they use words like ‘illegal’, ‘regret’, and ‘pirated’. These are what I assume to be Warner’s safe-words. Employed just to make sure the fun and excitement doesn’t go too far. Honestly, I can’t imagine what they thought would happen when they showed this at SCDD. Once again remember that more than one-hundred-thousand-people-were-there-all-armed-with-video-recording-capable-phones…

DC is fairly new the the ‘lets create a universe on film that already exists on paper’ movement. Marvel has been doing this rather successfully for the last several years. Whereas DC is still in it’s infancy. I’m hoping that DC has a conversation with Warner Bros that reminds them that the people they are scolding are in fact, their biggest fans, and the ones that are going to drop that ~$20 for the IMAX experience when the movie is released. And the people that see the footage that was ‘stolen’ from Hall H, now know the next thing to be excited about, where they likely would not have known before.