Marvel Studios goes to great lengths to ensure its secrets remain tightly under wraps until a movie reaches theaters. However, the secrets aren’t always kept close to the chest despite the company’s best efforts. In fact, the studio has endured a wide array of leaks over the years. This includes crew members sharing a t-shirt given to them by a Marvel movie’s stunt team which gave us our first look at Kang the Conquerer, as well as MCU co-star Mark Ruffalo accidentally leaving his phone on during a World Premiere. Secrecy can be challenging, but we were still shocked to discover that a transcribed version of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania’s script landed online a month before the movie was released. The studio behind some of the biggest superhero movies isn’t taking the leak lightly. According to a new report, Disney is actively hunting down the source of the significant Ant-Man leak.
Variety reports that Marvel is attempting to track down the identity of the person, or persons, who allegedly released a 63-page transcript of dialogue from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania to the social news aggregation and discussion website, Reddit — an entire month before the film’s theatrical premiere. A request filed on behalf of the studio on Friday, March 10, in a federal district court in California asked the court to issue a subpoena to compel Reddit to identify the person or group responsible for the leak on the subreddit r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers. The Marvel subpoena request was filed according to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The request from Disney Marvel asks for all "Identifying Information" for the user “u/MSSmods.” According to the report, a similar information request was issued to Google after someone allegedly shared the document to Google Docs. At this time, there is no information on whether or not Reddit or Google intends to cooperate with the studio in finding the leaker. However, a website representative told the publication, “Reddit is committed to protecting our users’ privacy. We have rigorous processes in place to assess legal requests and object when appropriate.
The Marvel blockbuster notably didn’t receive the kind of critical reception that films in the franchise typically do. However, it still managed to be the 31st straight MCU title to open at #1, and it became the first title in the Ant-Man series to bring in over $100 million domestically in three days. However, the Paul Rudd superpowered flick continued a lousy box office trend for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a dramatic second-weekend drop-off. The third Ant-Man outing set a new low bar by being the first MCU film to drop 70 percent in its sophomore weekend. The film grossed $198 million domestically through its fourth weekend of release, outpacing the original ($180 million) but trailing the 2018 sequel ($216 million). There are a lot of factors to account for when analyzing any film’s performance in its second weekend, but at this time, there is no news at this time on whether or not the studio intends to link the scrip leaks to the movie’s less-than-stellar performance, and we are left only to speculate.
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is currently still playing in theaters. Lukewarm reviews, criticisms of poor VFX (which the artists claim another blockbuster is responsible for), and the leaks aside, there are still plenty of things to enjoy in this Scott Lang and team follow-up, like the MCU debut of MODOK and Michelle Pfeiffer’s killer performance, returning as Janet van Dyne. Check your local listings for movie times, or you can wait until the movie drops on streaming later this year. All you’ll need to book your trip to the Quantum Realm is a Disney+ subscription.
