So cinemas illegally obtain digital cinema packages — the standard industry format used to screen films — through third-party distributors and copy them, Aliev said, adding that the owners coordinate a release date among themselves.
Moviegoers buy a ticket to see what is known as a short film under what is known as a “prescreening service,” he said. But while this is what is recorded on the receipt, in reality, “I’ll be watching ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ or ‘Batman,’” Aliev added.
Sony Pictures did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
And authorities appear more than willing to look the other way on the screenings, including those of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
Russia’s Ministry of Culture did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the seeming unwillingness to prosecute cinema owners. But earlier this week, Elena Drapeko, the deputy chair of the culture committee in Russia’s Duma, or parliament, called for law enforcement to act against what she called an “illegal business activity.”
Nonetheless, 18 seconds of the song “Monopoly” by Russian singer Monetochka appears to have been cut out of the copies of the movie being shown in her homeland.
The outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine was labeled a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities in 2022 and forced to flee the country for Lithuania the following year. She said in an Instagram post that she “hadn’t expected anything else,” but she found the song’s removal “painful and sad.”
However, fans dressed in Spider-Man costumes posted videos of themselves with the song playing in the background on social media.
That was only after many were left livid when the movie’s Aug. 6 release date was delayed by three weeks by the distributors of “The Last Warrior: Kolobok,” according to Cinemaplex, a Russian website devoted to the movie industry.
The move prompted a huge online backlash, and authorities were hunting for people who sent death threats on social media to Anton Maslov, the director of the film, which is based on one of the country’s most popular fairy tales, about a piece of bread that comes alive, according to the influential Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti, or “Beware of News” in English.
“It’s a symbolic conflict between a release, heavily funded by the state, about all things Russian, and a major foreign release, heavily funded by a foreign company,” Aliev said, adding that the audience felt “deprived of choice.”
Ordinary moviegoers would have been hit “pretty hard” by the order from above, he said.
Among them, Maria, a mixed-media collage artist from the city of St. Petersburg, who said she watched old “Spider-Man” movies until the new one came out. The delay, she said, was like sitting at a table where “everyone is eating cake” and you are forced to “eat a bowl of crackers” instead.
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