Pirates Surprise as Oscar-Nominated Movie Screeners Leak Online Again

'Screener season' used to make its annual appearance as reliably as the Oscars themselves. Copies of the most significant movies, intended for awards voters, would somehow end up online, for the unintended perusal of millions of pirates. A few years ago, screener copy leaks completely dried up, potentially forever. Then a few hours ago, a pair of Oscar-nominated movies, each with the same unusual feature, made their surprise entrance online.

oscar-pirate Shorter theatrical windows and improved access to movies via streaming, aimed to address one of the reasons some people prefer to pirate movies rather than pay.

While no silver bullet, making movies available legally is crucial in the fight against piracy. Yet, for many years, avoiding the most obvious response to unauthorized distribution meant that the ‘recently released’ movie market was dominated by not only illicit, but mostly inferior products.

Each year, usually around late December through mid-January, the market received a quality boost that attracted pirates in their millions. ‘Screener Season’ began when predominantly DVD-based movies were sent to those whose votes have the potential to transform great movies, into Academy Award-winning movies. But all too often, things didn’t go to plan.

Basic security failures saw screener discs lost, misplaced, loaned or gifted to family members, sold on eBay, or simply stolen. Whatever their route to the internet, high-quality screeners represented direct competition for genuine products, that in many cases wouldn’t be legally on sale for months.

There’s no real doubt that screener leaks had a negative effect on sales of legitimate products, but it took years to migrate screener viewing online. Enforcement action against EVO, a piracy release group with a reputation for screener leaks, eventually coincided with the collapse and assumed permanent demise of the screener scene late 2022.

And Then Two Come Along at Once

Seeing the word SCREENER in a release title is rare these days, seeing two within minutes of each other even more so. A long time TF reader wasted no time tipping us off about two leaks last evening, in one case less than five minutes after initial release, the other in just under eight.

september 5
September 5 premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival late August 2024. Distributed by Paramount (IMDb), the movie enjoyed a limited theatrical run in the United States starting December 13, 2024, before a wider release on January 17, 2025.

Focused on the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972, September 5 received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

(Release name as an image, to avoid being flagged in a wrongful DMCA notice)
september 5
Typically distributed alongside pirate releases, the ‘NFO’ file above provides information on the nature of the screener and subsequent leak. ‘COLLECTiVE’ is the name of the group responsible for the release. The group is known for its releases on peer-to-peer networks including BitTorrent; this release appeared on the private tracker iPT and at the time, there were no reports of an earlier appearance elsewhere.

The title tag ‘WEB-DL’ is an indication that the copy was downloaded (rather than ripped) from an online source, potentially an online screener viewing platform. Paramount operates a service for precisely that purpose, but there’s no information to suggest any specific origin.

paramount-screener-portal
The suggestion that the source of the screener was “a friend” isn’t especially helpful in its own right, but a clear mention of Portuguese subtitles is somewhat unusual. We’ll return to that in a moment.

Welcome to the MPA

For long-time MPA member Paramount, having a screener leaked online won’t come as any surprise. For Amazon MGM Studios, which became the seventh member of the MPA last September, its most recent addition since Netflix joined in 2019, the leak of a Nickel Boys screener is something new (IMDb).

Nickel Boys received a Best Motion Picture – Drama nomination at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, and a Best Picture nomination at the 97th Academy Awards.

At least potentially, this leak may be an unfortunate one-off for Amazon MGM Studios, but still one too many.

(Release name as an image, to avoid being flagged in a wrongful DMCA notice)
nickel-boys-release
The ‘NFO’ file available alongside this screener release indicates that ‘COLLECTiVE’ is the group behind it. The release was first seen on private tracker iPT with no earlier appearances elsewhere, at least as far as we know.

Made available in 1080p, it’s claimed that like September 5, the Nickel Boys screener was downloaded from an online source (WEB-DL) and distributed via P2P with English subtitles.

nickel boys
The inclusion of ‘remuxed’ (copied without changes) Portuguese subtitles is common to the leak of September 5. However, the Nickel Boys’ English subtitles are hardcoded, meaning that the viewer can’t easily turn them off to enjoy the switchable subtitles in Portuguese.

Given the choice, it seems likely that COLLECTiVE would have made both subtitles switchable, a strong indication that the source copy had English subtitles burned in by default.

Whether that means COLLECTiVE has a specific interest in catering to a Portuguese-speaking audience remains unclear. However, it’s an interesting coincidence when one considers that EVO, the prolific screener release group mentioned earlier, is believed to have been led from Portugal, at least until its demise three years ago.