Rumor has it they have the latest Pirates of the Caribbean

May 15, 2017 23:25 GMT  ·  By

After stealing and dumping the new Orange Is the New Black season online after a failed attempt to get paid a ransom, hackers are now targeting Disney. 

Bob Iger, Walt Disney CEO, has confirmed that hackers are making demands of them, but hasn't shared the name of the movie. Given how the next two Disney releases are "The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" this weekend and "Cars" a month from now, chances are higher that Johnny Depp's newest flick is the one being targeted.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the hackers are demanding a huge amount of money, although no sum is actually mentioned. As expected, they're asking for the payment to be made in Bitcoin, since that's very close to being impossible to track.

The threat is that, unless paid soon, the hackers will start releasing increasingly long chunks of the movie if their demand isn't met. First, the clips will be a few minutes long, and then 20-minute chunks. Thus far, there seem to be no such videos available online, but if this is the same group that released the Netflix original series, there's little chance they're bluffing.

We don't negociate with... hackers

As expected, Disney is refusing to pay and has already started working with the FBI to track down the hackers. Given how there's been little headway made since the previous dump and Netflix's collaboration with the same agency, this may end up in one of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer to be dumped online.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" is scheduled to open this weekend. It makes some sense for the hackers to be applying pressure on Disney right now with the incoming releases, especially since past experiences with blockbuster movies being released ahead of time ended badly for the production companies. One notable example is the release of The Expendables a few years ago, which resulted in a complete flop at the Box Office. Of course, the fact that the movie was a train wreck might have helped that situation too.