Man arrested over 'Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender' film leak, faces up to 7 years in jail
Singaporean police have arrested a 26-year-old man who allegedly leaked the upcoming film 'Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender' after accessing a media server where the project was stored.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Nickelodeon)
Singaporean police have arrested a 26-year-old man who allegedly leaked the upcoming film 'Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender' after accessing a media server where the project was stored.
The Straits Times reported that the suspect downloaded the unreleased animated film and leaked parts of it online, citing a police statement issued on April 24th.
Police identified and arrested the suspect within a day of receiving reports of clips circulating online on April 16th.
Officers also seized his electronic devices and managed to recover a copy of the film from one of them.
Preliminary investigations showed that the man had gained unauthorized remote access to the server. He then downloaded the film and shared parts of it online.
If he is found guilty, he could face a jail sentence of up to seven years, a fine not exceeding $50,000, or both.
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The film was first leaked on April 12th on X by a user based in Singapore who claimed that Nickelodeon, a company owned by Paramount, which produced the original series, “accidentally emailed” him “the entire Avatar Aang movie”.
The now-deleted part of the movie was attached to the post and stayed up for hours, getting more than 30 million views.
The video quickly surfaced on other sites, and an unrelated account, also appearing to belong to someone based in Singapore, leaked the full movie by April 13th.
A person claiming to have leaked the film told The Hollywood Reporter in April that they received it from a hacker friend associated with the PeggleCrew hacking collective.
“I saw it’s just a Paramount+ thing, so I decided I’d troll a little bit” by posting the videos, he said, adding that he didn’t think it would be a big deal since the film isn’t being released in theaters.
Paramount+ has since confirmed that the leak didn’t come from anyone within the company.
'Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender', previously titled 'The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender', is the first animated movie in the Avatar franchise and is set to be released on Paramount+ in October. It cost Paramount around $80 million to make, with the breach dealing a serious blow to the studio.
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