Christopher Nolan has taken pains to urge fans to see The Odyssey in Imax if they want the best experience. After all, his film was shot entirely in that format to optimize the moviegoing experience.
Imagine the director’s chagrin, then, when a high-quality version of the film was leaked on X this weekend, reportedly garnering millions of views.
Universal sprang into action.
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“We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights,” read a statement from the studio released to Deadline.
Though it can sometimes be difficult to get leaks deleted on X, by Sunday morning it appeared that most if not all of the copies were gone.
In fact, some fans took it upon themselves to foil those wishing to watch online. They did so by Rickrolling them. Fans posted what appeared to be the film’s opening, with the Universal globe and logo followed by a two-hour supercut of Rick Astley‘s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” See one here.
The leak hasn’t seemed to hurt the film this weekend, as it posted posting Nolan’s best ever second frame at the domestic box office. That $87M performance was driven in large part by large formats. Imax, PLFs and 70MM drove 57% of The Odyssey‘s sophmore weekend. That’s up from 53% last weekend.
