CK recently bought the film back from original distributor The Orchard, after the company decided that releasing a film about the struggle to divorce a creator’s actions from their art in the middle of a high-profile scandal about its creator’s actions might not be the most successful P.R. strategy. The assumption was that CK would probably release the film on his own web site for fans to download; that’s obviously a little more fraught now that the movie is all over The Pirate’s Bay, especially with the added allure of taking some cash directly out of CK’s disgraced pockets by watching it for free.
According to Variety, though, the pirate group in question—which is notorious for obtaining and illegally releasing screeners of major award-season picks—didn’t make this move to shame or discredit the stand-up. Rather, they’re apparently fans, writing that they broke their “no new screeners before Christmas” policy because the film “never made it to the cinema, and nobody knows if it ever will go to retail at all. Either way their [sic] is no perfect time to release it anyway, but we think it would be a waste to let a great Louis C.K. go unwatched and nobody can even see or buy it.”
