PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   When I was growing up — and I don’t take pride in this — bootleg DVDs were a regular part of my family’s media setup. Back in 2009, piracy was at its height, and those “You wouldn’t steal a car” ads weren’t yet the beloved memes they’d later become; instead, they were just an annoyance people brushed off completely. So yes, we had a few, with the most notorious being a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That pirated film wasn’t like your typical cam recording. Except for its unpolished visual effects and a temporary soundtrack filling in for the final score, it was practically DVD-quality. Most importantly, it started circulating months before the movie was supposed to premiere in U.S. theaters. The reason? It had somehow leaked straight from Fox Studios… pulled, of all places, from a preview copy made for Rupert Murdoch.

Piracy hasn’t vanished entirely in the 10-plus years since Wolverine leaked online, but this scandal felt like the start of a shift away from the practice. Film piracy has moved somewhat underground, now happening almost solely on online torrent platforms. In the late 2010s, the focus shifted more to premium TV, with episodes of Game of Thrones or Orange is the New Black appearing online well before their scheduled air dates. Even so, it’s been quite some time since a high-profile film with DVD-quality footage leaked before its theatrical release — until now, that is.

Paramount Skydance has been preparing to bring back its animated Avatar universe, supporting a standalone story set after the events of The Last Airbender. The Legend of Aang will reintroduce the title Avatar and his friends as grown-ups; it’s slated to debut on Paramount+ in October 2026. The issue? It seems like half the world has already watched the film, a full four months before its planned release. This past April, the entire movie leaked online, and it quickly spread to those previously mentioned sites or was cut into clips and edits for TikTok.

Clips from The Legend of Aang first surfaced online through an anonymous X user, who got the film from “a friend from his hacking days.” In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said he decided to leak the movie because he wanted to “troll” Paramount Skydance. The studio was already facing backlash for removing The Legend of Aang from its theatrical lineup and choosing to release it on its streaming service instead. That’s why many fans chose to watch and share the film once it was fully leaked: they argue they would have pirated it anyway, so doing it now doesn’t change anything in the end.

The artists who worked behind the scenes to create The Legend of Aang don’t share that view. “Pirating the movie after it came out would have been at least better than this,” Julia Schoel, one of the animators on Aang, posted on X. “We spent years working on the Aang movie… only to see people leak it without any respect and share our work on Twitter like it’s candy.”

The damage is done now, but those involved in the leak have started to be identified. On April 24, Singaporean authorities arrested a 26-year-old man accused of uploading The Legend of Aang online. It’s still unknown if this is the main person behind the leak or how he got access to the film initially. If convicted, though, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail and fined $50,000.

Watching this controversy play out as it happens is a weird experience — it’s been years since something like this occurred with such a high-profile project. The Legend of Aang isn’t the first work to be pirated, and it likely won’t be the last, but it appears studios are more determined than ever to prevent their content from being leaked.