14 DAY TRIAL // Kathryn Bigelow’s take on the war, “The Hurt Locker,” a small budget drama that went on to swipe awards at most ceremonies this year, was a critical hit, and a huge and surprising commercial flop. The film, made on a $15 million budget, made the same amount upon theatrical release in US and that’s mostly because it had leaked online six months before release. Or so its producer believes, as TG Daily informs.
Following many threats, Voltage Pictures has filed a lawsuit against 5,000 BitTorrent users who have downloaded the film from the P2P network. In it, they are asked to pay $1,500 each as compensation – otherwise, they will be taken to court separately and will be made to pay many times that amount. Moreover, the producer believes it has a very good case against the defendants, whose identities have not even been established yet, as they’re cited by IP addresses.
“Defendant’s distribution of even one unlawful copy of a motion picture can result in the nearly instantaneous worldwide distribution of that single copy to a limitless number of people. The Plaintiff now seeks redress for this rampant infringement of their exclusive rights,” the lawsuit reads, as per the aforementioned e-zine. This is the biggest lawsuit of this kind against separate individuals and, as per reports, Voltage Pictures believes it stands good chances of winning it.
We were also telling you earlier this year that, despite being crowned the best film of 2009 at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, “The Hurt Locker” failed to cause a dent at the box office. In fact, its performance was so bad, especially given the kind of hype it generated and how much critics sung its praises, that it was even deemed a huge flop, much to the disappointment of all those involved.
At the time, the fact that it failed to sell at the box office was explained by having been released on DVD and Blu-Ray before it arrived in theatres. Of course, that’s not to say it did not sell at all. “In its initial run, The Hurt Locker earned just $14.7 million domestically, the lowest gross for any best-film winner in Oscar history. On the other hand, the film is performing strongly on DVD, selling 780,000 DVDs and electronic downloads. In addition, it has counted 5.4 million rentals. In the UK, the Press Association wire service reported today that in the first 24 hours after the Oscars, rentals of The Hurt Locker shot up 117 percent on the online DVD rental service Lovefilm,” Contact Music wrote back then.