Warner Brothers Pulls Canadian Previews

A number of readers let us know that Reuters and others are reporting that Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen. A Warner VP said, "Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up." Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton.

Re:Lucky Canadians

[DJCacophony]

Oh, my mistake. I thought they said previews, rather than early screenings.

Re:A few years late, but....

[Magneon]

Well, we all know how well that turned out for you guys last time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 [wikipedia.org] "When the war had finished, 1,600 British and 2,260 American troops had died." Oddly enough both sides claim to have won... The British (now Canadian) said that they won because they successfully defended. The Americans claimed a victory because they stopped the native Americans from harassing them...

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[SpeedyDX]

It is true, what you say.

I go to a lot of previews (part of the perks of being a University of Toronto student if you know where to look). Whenever a preview is shown to a select group of U of T students, there's a noticeable buzz going around campus (40,000+ strong) about the new movie. For example, I went to the previews for The Last King of Scotland and Waitress. After watching the previews, spreading a few words here and there myself, there's a noticeable amount of interest for those two movies.

Anyway, I don't know why Warner Bros would do this. Fox previews require us to hand in cell phones and they pat us down to check for recording devices. I don't mind letting them have a little touch if they're showing me a good movie for free. It's a win-win.

Re:Lucky Canadians

[An ominous Cow art]

It's been something like four years since I've been in a regular movie theater for exactly that reason. I go to Chunky's [chunkys.com] instead; they don't do that. Every time I post a message about this, other people chime in with similar theaters elsewhere. I hope you can find one near you...