Marvel Studios takes legal action over 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' plot leak
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: It doesn’t look all good in the Marvel Studios as they are in a search for the person or “people” who are responsible for the leak of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ script one month prior to the film’s theatrical release in February in the US. The condemned source released a 63-page transcript of the film’s dialogue. Marvel Studios took the matter to court to find the people who are associated with the infringement of privacy and the leak.
Marvel Studios filed a statement last Friday at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in support of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and a warrant request was made for Marvel. The court was asked to issue a subpoena to force Reddit to name the individual or organization in charge of posting dialogue from ‘Quantumania’ to the ‘r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers subreddit’ "on or about" January 20, 2023. On February 17, the movie with Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, and Jonathan Majors had a broad release in the United States.
READ MORE
Fans hope for 'no spoilers' after Marvel Studios’ 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' world premiere
Marvel asked for "all Identifying Information for the user 'u/MSSmods'" and "any other user(s) responsible for posting, editing, and/or maintaining the content" that was accessible on the subreddit between January 15 and February 15.
A subpoena request was also aimed at Google, as the leaked material was available on Google Docs. The Vice President of Global Security and Content Protection for Marvel, Matthew Slatoff, told the court that part of his duties is to keep an eye out for and handle rights infringement by MVL Film Finance. According to Slatoff's declaration, a copyright infringement notification was sent to Google on January 21 after a Disney anti-piracy analyst found that ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ material had been uploaded to Google systems without MVL's consent. The takedown notice included a request from Google and a response from the rightsholder. It was filed via Google's webform.
The dialogue from the movie that had been leaked online was edited and/or presented in a Portuguese web interface, reported TorrentFreak, a piracy news website, which previously reported on the Marvel legal filings. Additionally, the report provided evidence that indicated "the text was likely intended for use in subtitles."
Marvel vs. Reddit and Google
Since the legal procedures started, the leaked material has not been found anymore. Since the leaked article was hosted on Google Docs, the Reddit users were not in a position to edit, as per TorrentFreak. The link to the document was just being hosted by the discussion based site. While a request was made to Google on January 21, the analysts from Disney (the parent company of Marvel) received confirmation that the leaked content was already taken down during the previous few days and Google could not find the requested URL.
Marvel's history of leaks
The parent company of the superhero universe is no amateur to spoilers and plot-leaks. However, Marvel has to battle through major spoilers ahead of most of its film releases. The leak of the trailer for 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' gave the fans of the universe an idea of Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield joining Tom Holland in the movie. Marvel's highest-grossing movie till date, 'Avengers: Endgame' also suffered from the spoiler attacks. As photos of their favorite superheroes shooting in their old costumes surfaced online, Marvel stans got the idea of 'time-travel' even before the film completed its shooting schedules.
