It was something of a hot topic in the middle of May. Unidentified online hackers allegedly forced access to Disney databases and claimed to have stolen a digital copy of one of their upcoming movies.
The film in question was widely believed to be “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” and the digital pirates demanded the House of Mouse to pay a ransom in untraceable BitCoin currency lest they leak the movie to the internet.
The threat sounded grave enough for Disney to call some heavyweight government agencies to investigate, however after a week or so without a new word, CEO Bob Iger has come out and publicly declared that the movie theft might well have been a hoax after all.
No further activity
During an interview with Yahoo! Finance, Bob Iger confirmed that Disney did receive threats from anonymous hackers that they have taken digital content, apparently a movie, and plotted to release it on illegal torrent websites. However, the studio now believes that no such digital theft happened to their knowledge.
“We had a threat of a hack of a movie being stolen,” Iger said. “We decided to take it seriously but not react in the manner in which the person who was threatening us had required.”
Assuming the worst and addressing the problem seriously may have well been the best move. Almost a month before the alleged online theft of “Pirates of the Caribbean 5” from Disney, another hacking group claimed to have swiped ten episodes of the upcoming fifth season of the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.”
The group did distribute the content to piracy networks after Netflix flat out refused to be extorted.
In the case of the Disney hackers, who are believed to be a different group, they were planning to leak five-minute segments from their stolen movie over set intervals until Disney accepted their demands. Iger assured that the studio had no transaction with the culprits, and with a lack of any activity from them, the worst may have passed.
Question on ‘stolen’ movie
While it’s been generally construed that if it was indeed stolen from Disney by the hackers, it would be the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film starring Johnny Depp. An alternative source has professed the possibility that they made off with an incomplete cut of “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” instead.
The “Pirates” film will be premiering on Friday, May 26, while “The Last Jedi” won’t be around until December 15. In between, them, however, is “Cars 3” which will race into theaters June 16.
