Leaked 'Wolverine' could spell disaster at the box office

On Friday, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" opens in theaters. The film opens the summer movie season, which means a healthy box office.

Or does it?

On April 1, a work print of the film was leaked onto the Internet. Since the film was a work print, several special effects-heavy sequences were incomplete; 20th Century Fox, the studio distributing the film, also claimed at the time the work print was missing scenes.

That didn't matter to many Internet users who were looking forward to seeing the film. The print was DVD quality and a little bit of imagination could fill in any incomplete scenes.

The response to "Wolverine" has been largely negative, which will probably discourage many from seeing the film.

So, if we consider "Wolverine" the start of the summer movie season, this weekend could be a weak start to this year's season.

But even if the work print hadn't been leaked online, "Wolverine" probably wouldn't have broken any box office records. The third "X-Men" film was so bad, it ended a lot of the goodwill toward the franchise. "Wolverine" probably would have been — and likely will still be — an underperformer, anyway.

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that, despite Fox's anger over the film being leaked, the studio may have leaked it, knowing the quality was lacking and that word of mouth would hurt its box office potential.

If they leaked it, when the film underperforms, the studio can cite the leak as the reason for disappointing revenues.

After all, a poor quality film is never the fault of the studio or the filmmakers.