20th Century Fox President Tom Rothman has probably endured the most stressful week of his career after a movie he has spent years and “hundreds of millions of dollars” on making was horribly subject of a workprint leak that it seems was finished enough for people to make a final judgement on, but not nearly finished enough to say it was completed.

Now I know Rothman is hardly our favourite studio chief the way he has handled tentpole after tentpole release for way too long now but no-one deserves what happened to him this week. And it’s more than understandable that he is pissed that what he calls a “complete misrepresentation of the film” in an interview with EW, “that is deeply unfair to the people who have worked on it for years”, may be the death of the Wolverine franchise at this point.

He said…

“Just like I’m sure there are lots of banks that get robbed that thought their vault was safe. We thought the post-production pipeline was secure at every juncture. But, obviously, it’s self-evident that  it wasn’t. I have a high level of confidence we’ll find out where the lapse in security was and we’ll bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Rothman said that his star Hugh Jackman was “heartbroken and hurt” when he found out about the leak…

“Hugh and I exchanged e-mails: Basically, we’re not going to let the bastards win. But we didn’t use the word ‘bastards.’ That’s a slightly sanitized version.”

Now the F.B.I. and Rothman are playing detective and looking out for clues on who might have leaked the film.