{"id":874982,"date":"2026-08-31T12:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874982\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:04:14","slug":"bootleg-spider-man-swings-into-russian-cinemas-despite-hollywood-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874982\/","title":{"rendered":"Bootleg \u2018Spider-Man\u2019 swings into Russian cinemas despite Hollywood boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"

So cinemas illegally obtain digital cinema packages \u2014 the standard industry format used to screen films \u2014 through third-party distributors and copy them, Aliev said, adding that the owners coordinate a release date among themselves.<\/p>\n

Moviegoers buy a ticket to see what is known as a short film under what is known as a \u201cprescreening service,\u201d he said. But while this is what is recorded on the receipt, in reality, \u201cI\u2019ll be watching \u2018Spider-Man: Brand New Day,\u2019 or \u2018Batman,\u2019\u201d Aliev added.<\/p>\n

Sony Pictures did not immediately respond to NBC News\u2019 request for comment.<\/p>\n

And authorities appear more than willing to look the other way on the screenings, including those of \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Ministry of Culture did not immediately respond to NBC News\u2019 request for comment on the seeming unwillingness to prosecute cinema owners. But earlier this week, Elena Drapeko, the deputy chair of the culture committee in Russia\u2019s Duma, or parliament, called for law enforcement to act against what she called an \u201cillegal business activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, 18 seconds of the song \u201cMonopoly\u201d by Russian singer Monetochka <\/a>appears to have been cut out of the copies of the movie being shown in her homeland.<\/p>\n

The outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine was labeled a \u201cforeign agent\u201d by Russian authorities in 2022 and forced to flee the country for Lithuania the following year. She said in an Instagram post that she \u201chadn\u2019t expected anything else,\u201d but she found the song\u2019s removal \u201cpainful and sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FansA “Spider-Man” fan meeting at the Kinograd cinema in St. Petersburg this month.Andrei Bok \/ SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n

However, fans dressed in Spider-Man costumes posted videos of themselves with the song playing in the background on social media.<\/p>\n

That was only after many were left livid when the movie\u2019s Aug. 6 release date was delayed by three weeks by the distributors of \u201cThe Last Warrior: Kolobok,\u201d according to Cinemaplex, a Russian website devoted to the movie industry.<\/p>\n

The move prompted a huge online backlash, and authorities were hunting for people who sent death threats on social media to Anton Maslov, the director of the film, which is based on one of the country\u2019s most popular fairy tales, about a piece of bread that comes alive, according to the influential Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti, or \u201cBeware of News\u201d in English.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a symbolic conflict between a release, heavily funded by the state, about all things Russian, and a major foreign release, heavily funded by a foreign company,\u201d Aliev said, adding that the audience felt \u201cdeprived of choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ordinary moviegoers would have been hit \u201cpretty hard\u201d by the order from above, he said.<\/p>\n

Among them, Maria, a mixed-media collage artist from the city of St. Petersburg, who said she watched old \u201cSpider-Man\u201d movies until the new one came out. The delay, she said, was like sitting at a table where \u201ceveryone is eating cake\u201d and you are forced to \u201ceat a bowl of crackers\u201d instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So cinemas illegally obtain digital cinema packages \u2014 the standard industry format used to screen films \u2014 through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-874982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}