Pirated "Gangster" worries studio execs

The original plan for this article was to shadow the undercover movie cops as they performed opening-night surveillance of "American Gangster."

But someone leaked a high-quality version of the movie before they got the chance.

It was a coincidental development in a story about piracy, but it hints at just how pervasive the problem is. The story line of the "American Gangster" leak is one that's particularly worrisome for the film industry.

It began a few weeks ago, when the illegal version of the film showed up on file-sharing Internet sites and on city corners at least 10 days before the movie's Nov. 2 theatrical release. Even worse for Universal Pictures, the film's distributor, was that the leaked copy was flawless, meaning that the illegal version for sale — ranging from $5 to $15 per copy — had not been recorded off some screen, but was a high-quality digital copy of the $100 million movie.

About 90 percent of films that are pirated are done so by someone taping what he or she sees on the theater screen, said Mike Robinson, director of U.S. Anti-Piracy for the Motion Picture Association of America. The remaining 10 percent, like "American Gangster," originate from studio or production-house leaks or from copies sent to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who vote for the Oscars.

In this case though, according to a Universal spokesman, no screeners were sent to academy members, meaning that the leak almost surely occurred fairly close to the film's studio source. The spokesman declined to comment on the status of the studio's in-house investigation.

"American Gangster" still managed to open in the No. 1 spot its opening weekend, but the result was little relief, Robinson said. "We look at pirates as competitors to the studios," he said. "Our objective is to make them poor business competitors."