The man who stole Wolverine opened the door to his Bronx apartment with a grunt, his thin frame hunched at the waist, an unlikely villain with a bad back and pajama pants. “I’m a scapegoat for this,” said Gilberto Sanchez, 47, after flopping down at his desk — the crime scene — and dragging on a cigarette. “I’m gonna get crucified.”
It has been nine months since the theft of the superhero, or more accurately, the superhero’s story. On March 31, someone posted a “work print” — an unfinished copy — of the film “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” on a Web site. It was a full month before the movie, starring Hugh Jackman as the famous mutant, was to open in theaters. Hollywood analysts called the leak unprecedented and speculated whether its free, albeit brief, availability to the public — and the unkind buzz that followed — would dampen its box office draw. Mr. Jackman himself was said by the studio to be “heartbroken.”
“The source of the initial leak and any subsequent postings will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the studio behind the movie, 20th Century Fox, said the day it appeared online. While the studio was up in arms, Mr. Sanchez, a glass installer and musician who knows his way around a high-speed computer, was watching “Wolverine” in his living room with three grandchildren. There were special effects and music missing, but no matter. “So we see a string pulling up Hugh Jackman,” he shrugged later.
Mr. Sanchez likes movies as much as the next guy, but detests the cost of taking the brood to the theater. He said that he bought a bootleg copy of “Wolverine” on the street and posted a copy on the sharing site megaupload.com for the cachet.
Eight months later, on Dec. 16, Mr. Sanchez was awakened by a knock at 6 a.m., and opened the door to F.B.I. agents, who placed him under arrest. He was charged with violation of copyright law, arraigned in federal court in Manhattan and allowed to return home. He faces the possibility of prison time, maybe in California, where his indictment originated....
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
