An 'unfinished' version of The Hulk appeared on p2p file sharing nets before its official release. And that's one of the reasons it did so badly - not because it was pathetic.

At least, that's what Adam Thomas, author of Informa Media Group's Film on the Internet, is quoted as saying in a GuardianUnlimited report here.

He also says file sharing isn't likely to be the, "cataclysmic event that the music industry experienced" but there are, "warning signs and it could be a serious issue".

The Informa report estimates 144,000 films (or 6,000 an hour) are downloaded every day across the world. And this can have a detrimental effect on more than just corporate profits, Thomas is quoted as saying, citing The Hulk which was available online two weeks before its official release.

As more internet users watched the pirated copy, online chat rooms filled up with bad reviews of what was an unfinished version of the film, says the report, adding, "Some in the industry have blamed this 'bad press' for the poor takings and official reviews received by the film.

'It may have been a bad film anyway, but that [the pirate copy] did not help,' said Mr Thomas. "So far the industry has been shielded from the full force of internet piracy by the huge quantity of data inherent in films, leading to lengthy download times."

The Hulk did poorley because it was garbage, give me a break Did you see the crappy effects in the comercials??? I would not have wasted my time with that movie. Even for free I would not waste it.

I saw the downloaded version and I can say that Lou Frigno's Hulk was much more believable. it was like watching an expensive cartoon

If it had been any good I would've gone to the theatre to experience it on the full screen.

Looks like p2p is a good thing in this case...look how much money people saved by not seeing a crappy movie.

does this remind anybody of the "coupon...the movie" sketch from mr. show with bob and david?

Seriously, what difference does it make whether or not people saw it before it was released and then told people they knew it was bad?

They could have gone to the movies and seen it and then told everyone what a piece of crap it was, and those people still wouldn't have wasted their money on it.

Whatever. I know one person that saw it and thought it was "ok." And this is the same idiot that saw Titanic and Pearl Harbor on purpose.

Imagine that. People discuss the artistic or entertainment value of a film publicly based on a viewing that they did not necessarily pay for. The people don't like it; the film does poorly at the box office.
What the matter with normal people? Don't they know that only film critics can do this?

The hulk did bad because it was a terrable movie with no plot or a real story line. Everyone knows that and all of us here agree on that for the most part. I never saw the Hulk because of forewarning from friends that saw it. The Hulk would be even a waste of my bandwidth to download, so ofcourse I wouldn't ever download it.

compmore

This exactly why the MPAA is pissed. They understand the first couple of days that a movie comes out are the big money days.

They spend hordes of money hyping the film in the hopes that consumers (I like to call myself a human) will show up the first day and not have the time to disseminate the bad news to friends and relatives. P2P has killed this propaganda strategy.

It is the equivalent of me putting a beautiful fiber glass shell around a lemon of a vehicle and not letting the person interested in vehicle test drive it. Mean while I am telling this potential sucker/consumer what a fantastic vehicle it is, day in and day out. In fact, I call this dupe on a daily basis and extolling the amazing deal.

On a side note some big things have happened recently I do not think people realize it. The do not call list was almost killed when corporations claimed it was their right to free speech to call you every day and try to sell you something. Multiple times the list was knocked back, but our president had no choice but to except the list. Why did he except it? You can not say no to 53.7 million people that sign up for such a list. That is power my friends and we can only use it when we recognize we have it.

Do not forget that we initially paid for the phone lines these corporations use to harass us with. It was not until the phone lines became profitable that they were handed over to private business. That is a real nice arrangement, isn’t it?

There are certain films you just have to see on the big screen. Besides, going to the movies is a social thing anyway and I wouldn't want to see everything on my small screen at home alone - how boring.

How long before the mpaa police come and jail us for blabbing to everyone about a bad movie....pepe

Hey, my -insert movie/album here- did badly because of -insert best p2p program out-. I can't prove that -p2p- made my -movie- sell horribly, but I can blame -p2p- without finding a shred of proof.

black orchid - agreed. you're 100% right. that's why I wanted to see it first, I was going to go to the theatre but heard so many bad things about it. BTW I didn't say I downloaded it, I just saw the downloaded version

Once again the're scared because with p2p people can preview before they buy. The good ol' days of millions of suckers lining up for crap movies/music is coming to an end.

The HULK did poorly cuz it was a piece of crap. End of story.

1) I'm not really a fan of comics, to this film didn't really appeal to me anyway.
2) Most of the reviews I looked at indicated it sucked, so I didn't even have to waste my bandwidth on such a stinkbomb.
Better outlaw negative reviews quick!

I bet that's why Gili bombed, too??

I was sick of Gili before the reviews came out. Ben and JLo marketed themselves so much I got sick of hearing it

Don't you people relize that it is their right to profit? Don't you know that they have every right to play off your ignorance and sucker you into paying for something you wouldn't want if you knew the truth about it? Why should a product be forced to stand on its own worth? Deception is sooo much easier.

I have an idea. I think the MPAA should be able to summon you to the movies like the government can jury duty. What do you think? And if you have anything bad to say about them we could concider it a hostil threat against the country itself.

Looks like P2P sharing will be the new scapegoat. Soon all the ills of the world will be blamed on the Children of Napster.

What they're all cheesed-off about is that in the "old" days, people would go to a movie (say, "Ishtar"), realize it was a POS, then tell everyone else not to see it because it's a POS. But, the film makers would already have YOUR MONEY in their pockets before the movie finally tanked.

NOW, with their whiz-bang broadband connection, the net-savvy can manage to find a pre-release of a film, view it and decide whether or not it'll be worth the $8-10... and tell their friends.

Which brings up an interesting dichotomy: remember when people were touting that Broadband would be the gateway that brought music and movies to your computer ON DEMAND? Ah, the golden naive days of the internet.

Since I'm not in the biz, just how much re-editing can a movie go through TWO WEEKS before it opens nationwide? And would it really be enough to make that big of a difference?

Of course thy're blaming downloading. Anybody but themselves. And don't hold your breath waiting for them to sing the praises of DLers for making a movie a success. Word of mouth works both ways. These entertainment yahoos don't realize that p2p is free advertising. The product will then sell itself.......or not.

i saw the movie cause im a big fan of the hulk, and i almost fell asleep.. it had no plot whatsoever nothing but him getting mad and tearing up shit .. sound kind of like RIAA.

Let's flip this argument on its head.

Didn't everyone (as in the critics) tell us that the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre blew wind? It was number one anyway.

So P2P has more power than the press?

I heard that file sharing is the reason we attacked Iraq, ever since Saddam freely started downloading oil over p2p networks out of the ground and directly into his shared folder, which, using his firewire port, uploaded the oil into barrels, thus negating the pipeline contract he had going with DIck Cheney and Haliburton.

He then used the money he saved to fund terrorism (through Kazaa), but the terrorists gave it back because they all hated Saddam so much, they didn't even want his money, and believed file-sharing was the "great satan".

I give Ang Lee props for attempting some neat cinematic tricks, but fault him for implementing them too intrusively.

I also like bacon.

I feel sleepy.

Have a great day!

Paul

Saw the movie in the movie theater. IT SUCKED. Nothing would help that flick. It had disaster written all over it. Forget file sharing. That did not destroy the expected profits. It is a very bad movie.

i didn't even bother downloading it because it looked so bad.

Pffft. Please. The Hulk looked like pure garbage. And I couldn't give a flying flock about the damn Hulk. Not to mention it also looked like garbage. Only hardcore fans should've gone to that movie.

As a friend of mine at work said. "I have seen better cartons than this movie"

'The Hulk' was pathetic, just like more than half of every movie that was released this year. P2P is definitely not to blame; what IS to blame is the movie's horrible Paint Shop Pro-like graphics (wow, a man transforming into a fake looking, puke-green giant, ooh) and lack of plot development. I still think P2P is great - saves people from spending money on over-hyped crap like 'The Hulk'.

Funny, Wall Street thought The Hulk was terrible too, look at Marvel's (MVL) stock performance after it released. Now If I had shorted Marvel based on a prereleased screening of the Hulk I got off of a p2p network, would I be an investing genius or an inside trader? Either way the MPAA would probably have been after me.

By the way has any union or manufacturer ever sued Consumer Reports because a product their members on was rated poorly? I may be off but it seems analogous.

As soon as I saw the 1st ad, I knew I wasn't going to go watch a movie with (humpf) special effects that weren't as special as ones I can make on my own computer.
Pretty much the same goes for alot of the (humpf) music these days... all ya need is a $100 keyboard from Wallmart, and a copy of Cakewalk Studio, and you too, can sound better than 95% of the RIAA stuff these days.
Remember METALLICA, they once thought they were better than thier fans too... how good are they doing these days?
mwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

"The Informa report estimates 144,000 films (or 6,000 an hour) are downloaded every day across the world"

that is f***ing BS, your lucky to find 20-30 people on kazaa with the movie, not 6000!!!

maddawg15 --they aren't talking about ONE movie, they are talking total movies transferred, not the Hulk, but all films. (Legally transferrable or not, they dont specify if its indies or personal video, just "films". I bet most of 'em are music videos.)

I went to an advanced screening of it and found that once again poor special effects was the only thing that keep most people awake. It was a dull plodding episode of departure from Stan Lee's original version.

Let's screw with the storyline must be a hollywood mantra!

The hulk did patheticly because the films awful. I didn't even bother downloading it, and my standards for whats worth downloading are not very high. I collect MST3Ks and old episodes of Dr Who, and even I wouldn't want to see Hulk.

I have no doupt those numbers have been skewed upwards a bit. 6000 films an hour? Unlikely. But, even if p2p piracy is having minimal effect on film profits now, it could have considerably more in future which has to be a good thing. As broadband becomes more popular and more people realise the convenience of downloading instead of going all the way to the cinema, profits are likely to fall a bit. Not as much as the music industry through, downloading a 700-meg film will never be as easy as a 2-meg MP3.

The MPAA is a more dangerous opponant than the RIAA. While the RIAA screams crazily about the end of the world dur to piracy, the MPAA secretly lobbies behind the scenes and forms conspiracies with CE companies.

these endless sequels. You will be pleased to know that Dimension Films has plans to film the 1970s TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" with Jim Carrey.

Here's a suggestion--Why don't you Dmusic people just send nine dollars directly to the MPAA and spare yourself the aggravation of parking, standing in line at the ticket window and popcorn stand.

you are right ronnie.....the RIAA and the Hulk both behave badly when angered

If they want to make something cool from the comic books of old I'd like to see the Fantastic Four take on Dr. Doom (riaa).

Oh, Sue would be worth the price of admission alone.

Flame on...

The Hulk was bad?

I'd better not watch it...

Especially since I can't believe the Hulk isn't real... [/sarcasm]

c'mon sherminator, I saw Titanic on purpose, it was a date movie. Of course, I drank a whole bottle of NyQuil during the movie, so maybe I was a bit.. um.. impaired?
anyhow, I liked The Hulk, but I'm a purist. I collect comics, and for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, my tag/signature is a line from Stan Lee. Point is, people didn't like The Hulk for myriad reasons, no point in saying it was d/l'ing that killed it. It was in many peoples opinions just a bad movie, and they told one friend, who told two friends..do the math. I've always been a bit pissy when people blame dl'ing for stuff like this. It's like they are saying "we can't make a good enough movie, so we're going to release it and when it crashes, we'll just blame somebody else."
ttmmm

Just my 2 cents, I didn't see the movie nor download it because I was told by friends who got to see it that the movie wasn't worth the ticket price that they had paid for. Personally, I don't think at all a movie CAN do badly because of online download material. Look at the recent Aces of movies that have done well even with "screeners" available online. Adam Thomas is obviously an MPAA-derivited author who doesn't understand that sometimes a movie that is just BAD isn't going to do very well.

Also, FYI to Adam Thomas, copies of Spiderman were WIDELY available online when the movie can out, yet I didn't download it, nor did I go see it (didn't have the time). I did, however, purchase the DVD when it came out and have enjoyed watching it immensly. I also believe that Spiderman did phenominally well at the box office, no? No idea where you get your research data, but it's tainted and wrong, at the least, and completely unfounded at best.

not having seen a "live" performance of any movie, and regretably missing many milestones in entertainment history for many years. I don't understand the circumstances of the "the hulk"'s losses, any more than I understand the failed expectations of the "starwars: episode 2".

Perhaps the boycott of RIAA controlled music, is finally becoming a boycott of the RIAA altogether, and accounting for these MPAA failures.

Jon Newton spends too much time submitting useless stories.

:-:~ Phantom