Caffeinated Clint
The bone-crunching brass at Marvel are on a Sam Gerard-esque hunting for a mole…. the mole who provided Latino Review with the scoops that they’d be doing a “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie in 2014 (a week or so before it was officially announced at Comic-Con).
Latino Review has published an email from Robert Grosser, vp of loss prevention at Marvel, who wants to know who the site’s tipser was. If they gave up the name, they’ll be rewarded.. apparently (or maybe that’s just a trick and they’ll be thrown in a cage with a TV playing nothing but Ang Lee’s ‘Hulk’ on loop 24-7).
Grosser’s email reads :
“My name is Rob Grosser and I am an independent security consultant working for Marvel. I have worked as a security consultant for Marvel since 1982. I am currently conducting an investigation on Marvel’s behalf regarding the dissemination of confidential, non-public information concerning Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy. The executives at Marvel are extremely upset regarding the release of this information and they have instructed me to find you and ascertain how you received it. My goal is to accomplish this in a quiet manner. I do not want to see you or anyone else get into trouble nor do I want to see anyone’s career be tarnished because of this. However I am very confident that through your efforts and mine, we will be able to work through this together. I personally feel that you did not have any malicious intent when you posted your spoilers on the fanboy website. Like many fans out there, you just wanted to be the first one to post something on the internet. I get it, however the Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy information was confidential and you did not have Marvel’s consent to post it. That was illegal!
If you provide me with your source, I will make it worth your effort. I want to work with you. As I stated above, I do not want to see you or anyone else get into trouble. That would be a lose-lose for everyone. I would hope that you are now realizing that this is a very serious matter and the consequences will be quite severe if I do not find out how you obtained the Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy information.
My goal is to ascertain how you got the Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy informationand make this go away. All information you provide will remain confidential, even your identity. Your source will never know. Let’s work together and make this happen before it is too late. To date, everyone I have worked with has not suffered any consequences. I do not want to see this situation get blown out of proportion. However if we do not work together, I will have no choice but to take this investigation to the next level and I will not stop until this investigation is completed.
Please get back to me with your thoughts and let me know how you would like to proceed. It is my goal to bring this matter to closure as quickly and quietly as possible. Thank you for your time and please get back to me as soon as possible.
If you would like to talk, you can reach me at [xxx-xxx-xxxx]
Thank you
”
Now, I’m with Kelvin and the gang at Latino Review when they question if Marvel knows what ‘reporting’ is… because clearly the studio doesn’t. And lines like “the Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy information was confidential and you did not have Marvel’s consent to post it”… I mean, come the fuck on!?!
Consent for running a scoop!?
I’m laughing in my damp jocks.
I don’t have the consent of half the things I post on Moviehole and probably wouldn’t get it pre-post if I asked. Did I ask Uni’s permission to post that “Curse of Chucky” scoop a couple of weeks back? Did I go to the powers-that-be and ask if it was OK I ran a scoop about Liam Hemsworth attaching himself to “Timeless”? Did I get Disney’s approval before posting a scoop (that Disney since believed they’ve debunked – – which, funnily enough, is all nonsense, because it’s indeed in development. I could even give you the names of the producers on it, gang) about “Hocus Pocus 2” being in development a couple of years ago!
Da7e writes, in response to the ‘threat’, over at the site, “I’m not responding to this e-mail outside of this post, because I’ve done nothing wrong. A representative of my favorite comics house just stepped into my life with no legal authority to demand anything and threatened my career for doing my job well.”
True.
So because LR aren’t going to rat out their source or abide by what Marvel says, are they now going to have their site squished and careers ruined? I doubt it, that’s actually laughable, but the studio do mean business.
I know.
Remember when Moviehole’s host shut us down once after receiving a complaint from someone ‘biggish’ that we had run the scoop on ‘Nick Fury’s surprise appearance in Iron Man’ a few years back? I sure do. Woke up to a nasty surprise – and one that cost us financially.
By merely posting something harmless, but no doubt something Marvel wanted to announce themselves, it seems our host received some kind of threat that if they didn’t take the website down (until we had removed the ‘scoop’ published ‘without consent’) they would be forced to read aloud the screenplay for “Elektra” in a public forum.. or something. As such, we lost a few bucks, a few readers and a good scoop… so they do have the bite to accompany their bark but, in Latino Review’s case especially, if you haven’t been shut down then stick to your guns and fight this one. For the sake of all “fanboy sites”.
Good luck, guys!
