A Blu-ray copy of Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home has been leaked online mere weeks before the film's highly anticipated official physical and digital release dates.
The P2P group EVO, which has released pirated copies of many popular films recently such as Dune and a screener of The Power of the Dog, is responsible for the leak, reported by TorrentFreak. While EVO has not revealed how it got hands on the copy of the hit superhero flick, the group claims that it is legitimate. "Yeap, its real. Exclusive. Enjoy," EVO said in the release notes. To mitigate the impacts of this leak, the official digital release of No Way Home has been pushed up from March 22 to March 15.
EVO does not appear to be the only one who has obtained an early copy of the film, however. An unauthorized eBay seller also began shipping out Blu-ray discs of Spider-Man: No Way Home this week. The seller, seemingly legitimate due to their 100% positive feedback, writes on the listing page for the movie: "Before you ask, yes these are the real deal. The same one you can purchase on 4/12. I just happened to receive them early. Thank you for looking." So far, 53 copies have been sold.
Spider-Man: No Way Home has enjoyed an unprecedented level of success since it hit theaters late last year, garnering over $1.8 billion worldwide at the box office to date to become the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time and the highest-grossing film of 2021. The movie centers around the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, who teams up with the Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange to erase everyone's memories of his secret identity, which was revealed during the events of the previous Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Far From Home. The memory-loss spell has some unintended side effects when the multiverse is broken open, making Peter's universe vulnerable to many villainous entities from alternate realities.
Leading up to its release, Spider-Man: No Way Home was arguably Marvel's most secretive project yet, due to its many cameos, appearances by villains and even alternate iterations of the web-slinging superhero himself from Spider-Man films not part of the MCU. This did not stop the movie from becoming the subject of nonstop rumors, leaks and spoilers, which Marvel attempted to quell though not always successfully. The fact that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire reprised their versions of Spider-Man was the biggest secret of all, with the two actors staunchly denying their return up until Spider-Man: No Way Home was finally released.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently showing in theaters. The film will be available for purchase digitally on March 15, while fans can grab physical copies on April 12.
Source: TorrentFreak