Fox Estimates Wolverine Downloads at 4 Million

For at least a few days, Fox was thought to have limited its total damage from Wolverine LeakGate to 1 million downloads and one massively confused studio front office. But in the same Wednesday conference call where Rupert Murdoch said the worst was behind News Corp. in general, Peter Chernin chimed in with new piracy stats quantifying what "worst" really meant.

The outgoing Murdoch deputy placed the number of illegal Wolverine downloads around 4 million since an unfinished workprint appeared online in March. I know Mexico was probably particularly eager to have a look under the circumstances, but 4 million downloads? Is there really a market for 4 million downloads -- probably a little more than $28 million worth at the box office -- of a film that grossed $174 million globally in its first week? 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?

This is the wave of the future! Next time, though, someone just notify the studio chief what you're doing. It'll look better in the press.

· Studio ups download figure for pirated Wolverine [Reuters]