Graham Burke, the co-CEO of Village Roadshow, is a liar. On September 9th 2014 Mr Burke told the Online Copyright Infringement Forum that holding the LEGO Movie back 54 days was a mistake. He sat on stage and told the gathered representatives (including now PM Malcolm Turnbull) that it wouldn’t happen again. He lied. It’s happening again.
“We made one hell of a mistake with LEGO. It was an Australian film, we financed it together with Warner Brothers. It was made here in Kings Cross, in Australia. Because it was so important, we held it for a holiday period. It was a disaster. It caused it to be pirated very widely. And as a consequence, no more.
Our policy go forward, is that all of our movies will release day and date with the United States”
Just a few years later and here we are. The Australian opening of The LEGO Batman Movie has officially been confirmed for March 30th 2017. That is 48 days after the US opening. That is certainly not day and date with the US.
Update: After a few people suggested doing so, I’ve created a change.org petition to see if we can make a difference. You can sign the petition here.
There are spoilers for the LEGO Movie below, so if you haven’t seen it please be warned.
For a lot of Australians the live action ending of the LEGO movie was spoiled by numerous online posts. It was very difficult as a LEGO fan to try and read LEGO news sites without seeing stories or comments that spoiled the end of the film. I know of at least one person who had the end of the film spoiled when they googled the name of the movie to find tickets. I don’t know if the LEGO Batman Movie will have an ending that can be really spoiled. I do know that if it does then there is a very real chance it will be.
We live in a connected world. On February 11th the internet will be full of details about the film. There will also be dodgy copies filmed on a mobile phone floating around on torrent sites. I am not condoning piracy, but Graham Burke himself has said that The LEGO movie was widely pirated because it was delayed.
Obviously I understand why Village Roadshow are holding the movie back. I’m sure that they have the figures that show holding it for the school holidays is a better financial decision. That doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying.
I’d love to hear what you think, particularly any parents with school aged children – does a movie coming out in the school holidays really matter to you?
It seems unlikely that Village Roadshow are going to change their minds on this, but when you see somebody making the same mistake for the second time you can either point that out to them or just stand back and see if they’ll eventually learn. Maybe if The LEGO Batman Movie is widely pirated because it’s delayed then we’ll get a timely release of the Ninjago Movie. Probably not.
Graham Burke’s comments come from the September 9th 2014 Online Copyright Infringement Forum. You can watch Graham’s comments for yourself here.
This type of delay does annoy me. We often plan to take the kids to the movies only to find that at their Vacation Care facility they have already seen a downloaded version. I totally disagree with them doing that, but have little recourse.
electric cupcake comes to mind….
I wonder if one of those online betting sites does odds on what the most downloaded movie in the country will be…
Gosh: you just made it onto news.com.au with a screen-grab of you post. Jolly good show. But there’s no reference / pic of you slamming him as a ‘liar’. Because such might be taken as defamatory. Perhaps best you delete or rephrase that bit, methinks.