Movie Piracy: Spider-Man, Odyssey Leak Online

What a slap in the face for Christopher Nolan.

The Oscar winner and generation-defining talent spent three years writing, directing, producing and editing “The Odyssey,” making his movie into its own kind of myth: a hand-crafted spectacle shot across six continents on the most rarefied cameras in the world, powered by the biggest stars and designed to be seen exclusively in movie theaters. But after only eight days of wide release last month, millions of viewers globally watched a pirated version of Matt Damon’s struggle to return to Ithaca on the social platform X. Audio and visual quality was as premium as the site could handle, and pixels on smartphones broadcast Nolan’s labor of love for free before it was yanked over copyright violation.

This is the lawless new universe of piracy. In the ’90s, outlaws in the aisles filmed “Jurassic Park” on camcorders and sold copies on street corners. In the early aughts, “Finding Nemo” was burned onto blank DVDs and hustled all over major markets by the caseload. These were physical goods dealt in the shadows. Now, the moviegoing public can stumble on perfect replicas of theatrical blockbusters on numerous social apps and screen them in full before copyright teams can hit the panic button.

The losses for media companies sit in the high tens of billions of dollars, a number that will climb as technology advances. This kind of piracy has become a double-edged sword for legacy media companies. To the delight of Hollywood, the “selfie generation,” Gen Z, has unexpectedly packed movie theaters lately — but they’ve brought along their digital habits. Audience members film crucial plot points and wild crowd reactions to show that they were there, and the studios look the other way and call it marketing.

“It’s terrifying,” says Jonathan Eirich, the co-CEO of Rideback and producer of Disney live-action remakes “Lilo & Stitch” and “Aladdin.” Eirich wonders, “Do consumers understand how serious this is, or does it still feel harmless?”

Just ask Peter Parker. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” fell victim to the same scheme as “The Odyssey” this summer. The gargantuan Sony Pictures hit is barreling toward becoming the highest-grossing movie ever in the U.S. It also played for 5.9 million X accounts — on opening day — before the studio shut down the bootleg version. Management consulting firm Kearney and anti-piracy company Muso estimate that piracy costs the industry $75 billion a year, and project it will reach $125 billion by 2028. With the average movie ticket costing $16, those 5.9 million views of “Brand New Day” on X surely cut into its potential revenue. In other words, Spidey himself can’t stop the astonishing speed with which illegal versions of brand-new tentpole films are appearing online. 

“Once a movie is out in the world, some piracy is inevitable,” one top film studio source says. “That’s the reality of releasing content globally in a digital environment.” 

The current method for catching and killing pirated movies online is about as complicated as filling out customer service forms. Studios submit takedown requests to TikTok, Instagram and other social media companies and await responses. If the stolen files are replicated widely enough, alarmed phone calls are made and lawyers get involved, the source adds, and most platforms act swiftly (with the exception of Elon Musk’s “notoriously difficult” X, per the source). A spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment.

The timing of this plundering couldn’t be worse. The industry is reveling in a rare moment of triumph as the summer box office hits $4 billion in ticket sales for only the second time since COVID closed theaters and cratered the economy (the 2026 total box office was more than $6.5 billion at press time). Titles like “Obsession,” “Backrooms,” “Toy Story 5” and “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — in addition to this summer’s smash hits “The Odyssey” and “Brand New Day” — have all contributed to this milestone. And all have been just as vulnerable to the near-instantaneous bootlegging. 

Despite the streaming revolution and fierce competition from social media, gaming and YouTube, Hollywood largely makes money the way it always has. That means a film’s theatrical opening is gravely important for a studio — in terms of both recouping its investment and setting up a film for profitability in later release windows. Diminished ticket sales due to piracy also affect actors and producers, who negotiate profit participation as part of their compensation for mounting a movie or TV show. 

“The Producers Guild and the MPA have their estimates on losses, but not knowing the specifics is almost more painful. It could be $5 million, $20 million or $50 million,” says Eirich. Most producers don’t  see a dime until break-even, he says, when a studio recoups the entire cost of its production budget. 

Any harm to box office within this sensitive first window is a crisis. Audiences may be showing up in droves this summer, but moviegoing habits have yet to fully reach pre-pandemic levels. Internally at the studios, copyright divisions spend their energy targeting larger criminal operations enabling these digital pirates — the hives sharing and disseminating premium content. 

“We build out the more complex cases against bigger piracy groups. We try to take them down and prevent them from reconstituting,” says Larissa Knapp, chief content protection officer at the Motion Picture Association. The trade group represents Hollywood’s interests in Washington, D.C., and has long crusaded to prevent billions in revenue from slipping through the cracks. Going after one rogue account showing “The Odyssey,” after all, is like picking cracked pepper out of a salad. 

Groups like the MPA still encounter piracy in the form of physical media. For example, the MPA routinely goes after rogue manufacturers of set-top boxes that help users pirate Netflix, Disney+ and other subscription media platforms. Policing that involves working with security departments at major companies like Amazon and Walmart to keep illegal goods off their commerce sites, where third parties are permitted to sell merchandise. 

There are also still hustlers sitting at the movies with cameras. These days, the equipment is a bit more subtle. “They make pretty creative contraptions to conceal how they record. It’s not Kramer with the camcorder anymore,” Knapp says, referring to an episode of “Seinfeld” about movie piracy.  

Another new threat is camera-enabled eyewear such as Meta AI glasses. Although the devices currently can record only three to five minutes of video, Knapp worries that criminals will be able to use AI to improve the quality of pirated recordings, smoothing out jerkiness or camera glitches. Who would spend their time capturing an entire movie on their glasses in three-minute blocks? Motive is a complicated question when it comes to piracy. 

Dig long enough in any Reddit thread, and you’ll find Robin Hood figures who want to stick it to the ever-consolidating media conglomerates. Others have genuine accessibility issues, from those who don’t live close to movie theaters to superfans thwarted by rights deals that block their geographic locations from showing a movie or series. Regional culture also comes into play. Pirating “Heated Rivalry” in China is the only way to see it, given the country’s strict censoring of LGBTQ+ content and explicit depictions of sex. 

While Hollywood adapts to these sophisticated new digital enemies, perhaps it is reconciling with the milder forms of piracy that they enable. For this year’s indie horror smash “Obsession,” TikTok was flooded with live reactions to the film’s many jump scares, and they’re still live on the platform. The same thing happened during a pivotal moment in 2025’s “A Minecraft Movie” when a beloved character from the titular game entered a scene, and Gen Z audiences went apeshit, screaming and cheering at AMC and Regal screenings around the world (and posting every second of their joy). The year before that, Cynthia Erivo’s rousing anthem “Defying Gravity,” which closed the first chapter of Universal’s “Wicked,” was clipped everywhere as fans wept in their reclining theater seats. 

“Finding a full and perfect copy of a movie online will probably keep you from buying a ticket and seeing it in person,” Eirich says, weighing the complex calculus of how much piracy is too much. “But if the studio makes a decision that a little is OK? If it galvanizes people? Marketing is full of risk. The matter here is a lack of control. It’s when someone else makes that decision for you, it becomes a violation.”