Ok, it’s really too impossible to quantify, but…
Foxs News Corp. once thought that about 1 million people downloaded “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Now their estimates claim around 4 million people probably downloaded the pirated and unfinished workprint.
Movieline does the math (thank god, we weren’t about to) and estimates around $28 million worth of extra dough could have been added to the worldwide tally that was $174 million (seriously, that’s a sad, sad commentary on the world we live in).
Is their math an exact science? Absolutely not, but they’re probably still in the ballpark. They cheekily suggest the leaked helped, not hurt the picture and everyone should adopt this new form of pre-promotion.
“Is there really a market for 4 million downloads? And if there was — considering how many people necessarily saw Wolverine twice — shouldn’t every studio consider a workprint leak for their own summer tentpoles?” Amusing, but no, not gonna happen.