Blockbuster movies from well-known directors are always highly-anticipated by moviegoers.
And in this 2020, one of the most prominent, is the time-bending espionage movie Tenet from Christopher Nolan.
Besides being Nolan's film, Tenet is also the biggest film released after the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic that shut down the movie industry.
As many have feared (and anticipated), footage from Tenet was already leaking, even before 2020.
What this means, even before it is released in theaters, footage from Tenet has leaked online despite Warner Bros.' best efforts.
But at this time, Warner Bros. was rather fortunate because the leaked Tenet footage was mostly from the special Tenet prologue, which was released with Inception's 10-year anniversary re-release. Warner Bros. however, issued takedown notices in instances where the footage has appeared on sites like Reddit.
The media and entertainment company also reached out to Google to remove copies of the footage that might have been stored by the pirates on Google Drive.
The first legitimate leaked version of Tenet appeared on torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Torrentz2, and 1337x, most of which have the labels 'KOR' and 'CAM'.
There are also versions that have been modified, labelled 'V2' for version 2.0, or 'NO ADS'.
Thankfully for Warner Bros. and Nolan, the quality of most of the illegal Tenet rips is low. Just like most blockbuster movies where the people are more active in preventing piracy, Tenet's initial leak exhibit severe issues with sharpness, detail, contrast, cropping, and/or color.
Audio quality is also muffled and difficult to hear.
There are also copies that are packed with frauds, and merely exist to trap viewers into downloading virus or other kind of malware.
It should be noted that some copies may look genuine.
The incident showed that Tenet was up to a more serious piracy concern.
Sources of the leak remain unclear, but reports noted that one of the earliest versions of the pirated Tenet have Korean subtitles, with some others having German subtitles.
There are also releases with an overlaid text, which invite viewers to a certain gambling site. This is a common advertising among pirated films on the web,
Warner Bros. that has already been busy sending takedown notices for leaked footage, is ramping up its effort to also send takedown notices to stop the spread of the pirated Tenet film, once then film was released.
Warner Bros. is being especially vigilant about incidents like these.
While leaks did happen, enthusiasm about the film is still high. After being forced to delay its release multiple times, when Tenet finally hit the theaters, ticket sales are well, despite many are still worried about returning to public spaces amid the pandemic.
Written and directed by Nolan, Tenet stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Clémence Poésy, Himesh Patel, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Fiona Dourif, Andrew Howard, Martin Donovan, Sean Avery, Jack Cutmore-Scott, and Denzil Smith.
Tenet that explores time-bending ideas like that in Inception and Interstellar (both are also directed by Nolan), was made on a reported budget of $200 million. This makes it Nolan's most expensive movie to date.
Nolan produced Tenet with his wife Emma Thomas.
