As I write this article, one of the best websites for movie news which I visit every single day IESB.net has been taken down because of those spy photo’s they had on their site for the Iron Man movie. When I said that Paramount needed to do something about the guy’s taking the photo’s yesterday, this isn’t what I meant.
What I meant was add more security, add more enclose, make sure you block any public access points with big black covers…. anything that will stop the guy’s taking the photos. Shutting down the website for hosting the images (which sites like ours and The Movie Blog have promoted) without simply asking IESB to remove them from their site like they continuously do for AICN is a shameful and disgusting act.
These were legal photo’s, taken in a public area and although yes they were extremely spoiler-ish for the film, I’m positive that the good folks at the site would have taken the images down out of respect for the filmmakers if it had been requested of them.
So this brings out the question… who is right in this argument?
Are Paramount right for shutting down IESB because they promoted very spoiler-ish and potentially damaging images from the set of Iron Man on their website?
Or are Paramount completely in the wrong for taking down the site, which after all was promoting completely 100% legal photo’s which were taken in a public space?
Over the last couple of weeks here at Obsessed With Film, we have promoted the spy footage from both the set of The Dark Knight (which had huge spoilers) and Iron Man…. is it morally wrong for us to promote this stuff? It’s certainly not legally wrong as Paramount would have you believe (although I wouldn’t want to mess with them in the court of law) but is it morally wrong to have such explicit images from the set be posted on websites?
My take on this is simple…
Paramount were completely out of order in shutting down IESB and it was blatantly a show of power from the studio. A “You don’t post images from our set without our permission” type of message. Paramount did have the right to have been annoyed at IESB for the images but if they had used their common sense and simply spoke to the guys at the site, I’m positive this matter could have been resolved.
What is your take on all of this? Are the set photo’s and video’s that we promote on blogs such as this one which offers movies like Iron Man FREE ADVERTISING doing something that’s morally wrong and something we should be punished for, or are studio’s taking the matter completely out of proportion and using it as a chance to flex their muscles?
At 10.42am (U.K. time) IESB.net is still down. Thanks to The Movie Blog for bringing this to our attention.
2 Comments
I think it’s a shame Paramount used a howizter to kill a mosquito, but that’s the nature of big companies. They probably think this will have some sort of chilling effect on other blogs. It won’t but they can dream.
That said, let’s stop it with the “free advertising” line. It’s just that, a line. If the studios felt they needed bloggers to spread the word (ala Snakes on a Plane) they would say so. The “free advertising” defense is a lame rhetorical talking point used by people clutching at straws for some way to defend what is plainly eavesdropping and violation of privacy. The argument sounds weak and it is.
If this was some Independent picture with no budget and no marketing money then it wouldn’t be a problem (funny how bloggers never do these kamikaze photo-nabs for small indy pics, ain’t it?). But Iron Man is going to have all kinds of promotional money going into it. Its going to be Paramounts’s Big-Gun summer movie of 2008, so they don’t need any help getting the word out. All this does is reveal the plot and story points over a year before the flick comes out, leaving the assorted snippets open to all kinds of interpretation. Franchise films (especially comic book movies) have active and vocal fanbase’s built in. None of them are ever totally satisfied and if they don’t see during production what they think they should be seeing, then they’ll try to kill the film through word of mouth (see: CraigNotBond). They don’t know or care that half the shooting schedule of these summer blockbusters are spent shooting on a soundstage where no one has access so it’s impossible for spys with only a few grainy pics and video from one day of shooting to judge what the final package will be.
That said, these movies represent a HUGE investment for the studios. Spoilers hurt the profit potential of a movie. Consider how much bad press is out there for Transformers already even though Bay and Co. have done an excellent job of keeping a huge summer spectacular fairly under wraps. The movies are an investment, and the studios are just doing the good work of protecting that investment. But going after one site isn’t going to stop this kind of thing. Having a sit-down (or email exchange) with the blog/site owners and laying down ground rules would be a much better thing and avoid this kind of unpleasantness.
And as for security, in my hometown we just got through having The Cleaner with Samuel Jakcson shooting, small movie, small budget, and the cops closed off streets for five blocks in all directions. You couldn’t get anywhere near the set. Same for Harold & Kumar 2 when it shot here. Small movies, but they got big protection. And Denzel Washington and Forest Whittaker will get the same treatment when they start shooting The Great Debaters here next week. The studios should focus on more than just the blogs.
I don’t think there’s anything immoral or wrong with them posting the pictures. I agree with you that if Paramount was that concerned with keeping the production under wraps, they should have done something to prevent such easy access to the proximity of the set. It was completely wrong for them to shut down the site when, as you mention, they could simply have asked for the pictures to be removed.