The LEGO Movie is awesome! Or at least, we think so. Everyone in the world will see it before one of the world’s most notorious pirate-happy nations (Australia, for those playing at home), which may very well lead to The LEGO Movie being the most downloaded film of the year. Attorney-General George Brandis wants you to stop downloading stuff, and plans to re-introduce three-strike laws to do it. Think he can empathise with you, the people, that Australia gets film and TV releases last? Don’t: turns out he’s already seen it.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the Attorney-General attended a pre-release screening in Canberra of The LEGO Movie this week in Canberra.
The screening was reportedly put on by Village Roadshow, the company distributing The LEGO Movie around the world.
The group executive of Village Roadshow, Greg Basser, actually had some very nice things to say about the Attorney-General in regards to his ongoing crusade against piracy. According to Basser, Brandis’ policies are “forward-looking” and pretty much perfect:
It is theft and if filmmakers can’t get protection there will be no industry. From all of us that are passionate about Australian film, Mr Attorney we say thank you.”
This is the same company that seems to have been so embarrassed about us pointing out that The LEGO Movie will release last in Australia that it has removed any reference to Australia and New Zealand (the two countries getting it last) from its official release date page. For those wondering: the release date still appears to be April 3.
Back to the screening, however.
A screening in the first week of March means that Attorney-General George Brandis right now occupies a select group of people: those who have watched The LEGO Movie in Australia legally. Nobody else can really do it right now, considering that not even media review screenings have kicked off for a film that has already been out in the US for a month (at the time of publication).
Good to see the man fighting piracy has to wait like the rest of us to get access to content that was actually made in Australia and exported to the world. Oh wait, I mean the other thing.
It’d be nice if the Attorney-General — the man responsible for stopping piracy in Australia — would spend more time understanding the needs and concerns of the consumers who do download content, and less with the old-guard of film studios who are committed to ancient and flawed distribution models.
Attorney-General Brandis praised the film’s Australian creators, Animal Logic, at the screening:
The fact that an Australian production house, Animal Logic, can have developed a film of such tremendous commercial success tells us about the vitality of the Australian film and digital effects industry.
How about a review of The LEGO Movie for Gizmodo, Attorney-General? [Daily Telegraph]