The whole idea of WikiLeaks was a novel thing for the country and the world to face, as suddenly state secrets were being drawn into the unstoppable riptide of internet communication. With the flip of a switch the government was having to consider the implications that nothing, no matter how important, could be kept secret and that lives could even be endangered if identities were revealed or other plans made public. All of which is very serious shit, so the idea of applying that model to Hollywood certainly just matters less, and also isn’t as shocking in the first place. Be that as it may, it is happening, and it may have some implications you wouldn’t immediately consider…
lulzsec pissed off groups like the CIA (though did little real damage). Could a similar group throw major kinks into Hollywood's operations?
On Gawker today, you can find a report about a new group called Hollywood Leaks, an Anonymous/lulzsec style group of hackers that are just now starting to get exposure for stealing scripts from Hollywood and spreading nude pictures of a female rapper (released during the VMAs.) They’ve also been leaking phone numbers of people like Miley Cyrus and Lil John to the public. The group doesn’t seem to have as strong of an identity as, say, Lulzsec but they still seem to have pretty distinct, if still ultimately vague, set of goals.
“We’re currently sitting on several unreleased movie scripts, and enough numbers / emails to keep phones ringing and the inboxes full for the foreseeable future…. We’re simply here to facilitate the free flow of information from a place which was previously over looked, Hollywood.”
What this means is that they’ll be hacking into the email accounts of studio executives, producers, filmmakers, and stars to steal scripts and presumably whatever else they can find, be it concept art, casting lists, schedules, etc. They’ll also be more directly targeting celebrities stupid enough to have incriminating digital files on their phones or in their emails, though smarter ones will also suffer when they open up twitter accounts and cellphone numbers publicly.
I think this could be a (relatively) big deal, and I’ll tell you why, but first of all one does have to acknowledge a few truths…
On the industry side of things, the studios have made fighting the piracy of its product a key concern for years, and spent millions of dollars doing so. On the celebrity side an ecosystem built on leeches, the entire purpose of which is to snap salient pictures of stars doing coke, being racist, or flashing a tit, is simply the way things are. TMZ is only the most recent and efficient incarnation of gossip rags that have profited for decades, and while major production leaks and high-volume digital piracy are a relatively new phenomenon, they’re still well established and understood concerns in showbusiness. So if unwanted exposure is written into the very foundations of modern Hollywood, how could a few hackers even register as that big of a deal? Simply by accelerating the empowering a trend that’s already occurring, using a few new tricks.
For one thing, the application of the anonymous, roving hacker model against Hollywood is something they’ve never quite dealt with before, and these studios haven’t exactly shown themselves as pros when dealing with the internet. And of course we’re plenty used to leaked sex videos from stars and (as I’ve recently bemoaned) we’re growing increasingly used to an utter lack of secrecy from major productions by way of relentless cellphone footage. But for all of the shots of Catwoman and the Tumbler in PA, or the Avengers fighting mo-cap suits in OH that won’t matter in six months, imagine if the full production schedule of one of these films leaked? How would it affect a $200m productions if it was suddenly made public not only exactly where they planned to be months ahead of time, but what they’ll be shooting, what stars will be there, etc. etc. Obviously this isn’t as big of a deal as a CIA operative being made or troop movement being leaked to terrorists, but there’s still a lot of money on the line and lot of ways that too many eager fans knowing too much could screw things up for a production.
This kind of thing is only the beginning.
Beyond that is the easily imagined scenario in wherein Pirate Bay is suddenly host to the Green Lantern 2 production bible with the script, breakdowns, concept art, etc. We’re already at a mass frenzy of breaking down every scrap of minutia that emerges from these films… what happens when they don’t just unlock the doors to the sausage factory, but tear down the walls entirely? And unlike esoteric government files that bury important details amidst hundreds of pages of boring material, this is the kind of crap that draws eyeballs and lights the Facebook crowd on fire, which could in turn attract more and more hackers that want to be the one responsible for leaking the design of the new Dock Ock in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 or whatever.
It’s not really a scary scenario (it’s fucking superheroes and twitter accounts, after all), but it is mildly shocking to think how far it could go. Surely some of this will come to pass as we as a culture spiral further and further into the nightmarish media turbine we’ve created for ourselves. At the very least I have no doubt that within a couple of years there won’t be a single major production that won’t have its script available to download by anyone before it even starts filming. Django Unchained is a recent screenplay that was notoriously easy to get, but it still required a modicum of effort to nab. I think those days will soon be over if these guys make Hollywood hacking the new cool thing. Remember that most of the lulzsec, wikileaks, and other 4chan-style hacking doesn’t require a particularly sophisticated set of skills- a lot of this stuff comes from the exploitation of basic tricks. And yeah, the studios may get nasty or even litigious about certain things, but there’s still much less danger in fucking with Paramount by dropping the M:I 5 script online than there is in dumping a couple top secret files from the CIA. It’s an attention-hungry hacker’s wet dream- the material is sexier, less dangerous, and much easier to get.
And then here we sit… we online film sites. Little shame has been shown by even the most mainstream of sites this year, in regards to running anything and everything that spills out. This is despite vague credos and ethics being debated on twitter by the prominent web personalities ad nauseum. There’s already an infrastructure that’s hungry for the tiniest and deepest of details, even if it’s just a Justice League logo mockup printed in black and white on a “costume department –>” sign. If a wave of hackers decide this is the new cool thing to hack, the online sites will be there to hand them the eyeballs…
I’m VERY interested to hear your take on this, and if you think much will come of it. What kind of future do you envision for movie geeks looking from the outside in? Let me know…
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