Spoilers? Yeah, nobody likes them. But when it comes to leaks, it’s a whole different ballgame. Marvel Studios knows this all too well, which is why they’re going to great lengths to protect their upcoming projects.
During a conversation between Entertainment Weekly and the cast of Secret Invasion, Samuel L. Jackson spilled the beans on an interesting incident during filming. He disclosed that while on set of the Disney+ show, a bunch of drones were spotted hovering above the production.
Marvel Studios’ crack security team swiftly leaped into action to eliminate the intruding drones. Fortunately, they managed to bring down one of the pesky drones and pursue another to catch the culprits responsible for trespassing.
They shot one down. And they followed one back to where the dude was. They found him and, yeah, they got him.
But that’s not all! Marvel has gone above and beyond to thwart any leaks, going as far as actively pursuing the source of a leaked Avengers script, according to Jackson.
There are worse examples than that! I remember when we got ready to do Avengers, someone printed out a copy of my Avengers script that had my watermark on it, and put it online for sale. I was shooting in Canada and Marvel came to Canada. It had been printed in the production office… They found out who it was, dude quit, left the country. They set up a fake buy for the script, dude didn’t show up. It was crazy.
No matter what people may say, Marvel has truly raised the standards for many similar productions, leaving them with no choice but to follow suit. Emilia Clarke, who brilliantly portrays the character G’iah in Secret Invasion, knows this all too well.
The talented 36-year-old actress, renowned for her iconic role as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s critically acclaimed series Game of Thrones, recently shared how the showrunners of Game of Thrones started adopting Marvel’s stringent security measures during the later seasons, saying:
When we were doing Game of Thrones, when it started to get to the later seasons, some massive security changes happened. I was chatting with [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and they were like, ‘Marvel. We’re just learning from Marvel. Whatever Marvel’s doing, we just want to do that.’ So that became, you don’t print anything — and then there was like me and Peter Dinklage being like, ‘I need it on paper! I can’t learn my lines without it being on paper!’
Once Clarke became a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she distinctly recalls a nerve-wracking Zoom call with the Marvel Studios’ security team that left her scared to death. In fact, she was so spooked that she removed her SIM card from her phone, fearing the possibility of overzealous fans tracking her every move.
I was like, ‘I think a man’s going to come and kill me if I say anything.’
It’s actually quite amusing when you think of the extraordinary measures Marvel goes through to safeguard their projects from leaks, only to have Tom Holland and Mark Ruffalo inadvertently spill spoilers during a film’s promotional tour.
Don Cheadle appears to share this sentiment, as he too mockingly acknowledged the rigorous security protocols employed by Marvel during the filming of Secret Invasion.
They didn’t just hold up a picture of Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland and say, ‘Don’t be like these guys?’
In this day and age, the hunger for exclusive scoops and leaks drives people to great lengths, even if it means shelling out hefty sums of money.
When it comes to safeguarding productions, legal action can only go so far. That’s why extreme measures like taking down trespassing drones have become the last resort to combat the relentless intrusion that now plagues the entertainment industry.
Read More: Marvel Studios is now shooting down drones to safeguard against leaks