A DVD-quality copy of actioner “The Expendables 3,” has been downloaded via piracy sites more than 189,000 times over a 24-hour period — just three weeks ahead of the U.S. premiere.
The leak of the film on the Internet ahead of its theatrical debut, an unusually rare occurrence, could dampen box office for “Expendables 3.” With teh target demo for the movie being young males, who are the biggest users of illegal file-sharing services, this cost be very costly at the box office.
With 21 days left to go before the Aug. 15 premiere, the number of illegal downloads of “Expendables 3″ could soar into the millions.
Pirated copies of “Expendables 3″ began cropping up on torrent-sharing sites Wednesday and downloads started to spike Thursday, according to data provided by piracy-analytics firm Excipio. As of 6 p.m. Eastern Thursday, the movie had been downloaded 189,052 times worldwide, with 42,216 of those in the U.S., according to Excipio.
A similar a leak happened in 2009, when a rough cut of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was shared on Megaupload.com about a month before it hit the silver screen. Fox estimated that at least 15 million people downloaded the movie, and represented tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
