The Final Verdict on 10 Famously Leaked Scripts

The Dark Knight Rises

Being that it’s one of the most anticipated motion pictures set to release this year, there was bound to be a script leak. And sure enough, in late December 2010, details began emerging of a supposed leaked script for “The Dark Knight Rises.” As you would expect, fanboys went nuts.

The (Supposed) Plot
The plot revolves around a large number of villains. Dr. Hugo Strange, a popular Batman villain who learned Bruce Wayne’s secret identity in the comics, is the main villain pulling all the strings. The script also contains villains such as Black Mask, Killer Croc and Talia al Ghul (daughter of Liam Neeson’s Ra's al Ghul from “Batman Begins”). Tom Hardy was expected to play Black Mask.

The Verdict
False! As we can now tell from the barrage of clips and trailers for the new film, these villains are not part of the storyline. Also, websites such as Batman on Film went as far as contacting Warner Bros, who told them that no such leaks had come from their end and that the supposed “leaked” script was a fabrication.

Terminator: Salvation

In June 2008, Ain’t It Cool News broke a story that the ending to “Terminator Salvation,” which was not set to release in theaters until the following year, had been leaked online. It spread like wildfire, with fans of the franchise appalled by the huge spoiler.

The (Supposed) Plot
This is the synopsis taken from the source of the leak itself: "Alright so the main character is a cyborg named Marcus. For some background, Marcus was a criminal who was executed in 2003. He donated his body to Project Angel which was involved with SkyNet. They take his body and make a terminator out of him so he's a terminator skeleton but has living muscle/skin and a beating heart too. At the end of the movie John Connor is fighting a T800 model 101 and loses. He dies and the top resistance people come up with a plan to help the resistance keep fighting on. The resistance feels that it's important to keep the image or idea that John Connor is still alive so the resistance keeps going. So they rip off Marcus' skin and put John Connor's on the skeleton so now Marcus is John Connor."

The Verdict
True. Though initially denied by director McG, the ending leaked online was, in fact, the original ending of the movie. In due time, McG even confirmed this, adding that there was at one point an even darker ending than the one in the leak. Apparently, once they put John Connor’s skin on Marcus’ body, he sat up and killed all the main characters in the room. Thankfully none of this was the ending featured in the final cut of the film, due mostly to fan outrage. The actual ending of the movie sees Marcus dying and Connor living on, like a good Terminator movie should. But, in all fairness, it still has similarities to the leaked ending.

Thor

On January 27, 2011, an alleged script to the movie “Thor” was leaked online to various websites and message boards. Paramount, the company behind the film, responded quickly with takedown notices to all the sites that posted the leaked script. However, once it was out there, it could never really be taken down, and plenty of people who had the chance to read it wrote reviews, detailing many specific aspects of the plot.

The (Supposed) Plot
Well, the movie is out now, so there's no need to go into detail. Basically, the major spoilers people were buzzing about were the character of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) making a cameo appearance and the mentioning of “Dr. Hank Pym” (aka Ant-Man, a rumored Marvel movie/"Avengers" tie-in in the works) and “a pioneer in gamma radiation,” whom everyone assumed was referring to Bruce Banner (aka the Hulk).

The Verdict
True. This was legitimately a leaked script. It was 191 pages long and dated March 26, 2010. All the plot details lined up with what ended up being the finished product. The only thing speculative fans got wrong was assuming that Mark Ruffalo might make a cameo appearance. He replaced Edward Norton as Bruce Banner/the Hulk in “The Avengers.”

The Avengers

Did someone say “The Avengers”? On April 27, 2011, it was discovered that a certain Samuel L. Jackson had lost his personal copy of the shooting draft to the film. Not only that, but someone had found it, and was offering to sell it. Want proof? Here are some photos that the perpetrator sent to several known news outlets to show that the script he had was indeed legit, with “Samuel L. Jackson” watermarks and Marvel’s seal of approval all over them. Dated April 8, 2011 and with the title “Group Hug” (the films secret production title), this script seemed on the level, although not legally.

The (Supposed) Plot
Since there are only a few photos of pages of the script, all that is known plot-wise is that there are two scenes going on at the same time: one involves Iron Man and Captain America running around an engine room; the other is Bruce Banner changing into the Hulk.

The Verdict
True. Both scenes seen on the script page were in the film. Rumors spread quickly after the leak that production on “The Avengers” had temporarily shut down as a result of the theft of Samuel L. Jackson’s script. This was just rumor, however, and business went on as usual. Later, it was revealed by Jackson himself how the script leaked. The thief was eventually caught and put in jail (ComicBookMovie.com).

Scream 2

A very popular leak at the time, it appeared that an early draft of the screenplay for “Scream 2” was released online shortly after production on the film began.

The (Supposed) Plot
The opening scene is a slight variation from what is in the actual film, but the end result is the same. The two college students at the movie theater are killed by the Ghostface killer. The movie’s ending climax reveals four killers: Derek (main character Sydney’s boyfriend), Hallie (Sydney’s roommate), Debbie Salt (Mrs. Loomis, the original killer’s mother) and Cotton Weary (the man accused of murdering Sydney’s mother in the first film).

The Verdict
Well, true and false. This leaked draft was indeed the plot of the movie. However, once it was leaked, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson began swift rewrites. Therefore, the killer count at the end of the film went from four to two, and only one of the killers in the leaked draft ended up being a killer in the movie.

Mr. Peepers

Remember Mr. Peepers? He was the "Saturday Night Live" character played by Chris Kattan who was supposedly the earliest known primate. Here: just for fun, refresh your memory. Anyways, this story started when SF Weekly received a bound, hard copy of the screenplay "Peepers: A Canticle" in the mail and were told via a note inside that someone had found it at City Lights books. Copies have also been seen at San Francisco’s Green Apple bookstore and Los Angeles’ Time Travel Mart, as well. It was supposedly the unproduced screenplay based on the SNL character Mr. Peepers, written by none other than C.L. Kattan (Chris Kattan) himself.

The (Supposed) Plot
The entire script is right here, but if you don’t want to read the whole thing: the script follows Mr. Peepers through a story based on the the 1979 film “Being There,” with Mr. Peepers in the role of Peter Sellers’ Chance the Gardener. It also includes Mr. Peepers dishing out wisdom to former (at the time current) President George W. Bush, and in the end, humping the Earth. If that intrigues you, again, feel free to read the script.

The Verdict
False. This is probably one of the most elaborate ruses on the list. The script was written by 27-year-old Los Angeles writer Justin Becker, and as far as we can tell, he did it for laughs. Becker traveled across the West Coast, planting his scripts all over bookstores, hoping they would get discovered. He basically thought, "it would be funny to find out that a Mr. Peepers movie had been written, and it was very serious and pretentious and political, and it had been shelved because of 9/11” (SF Weekly), which is explained in the preface of the script and by the fact that the screenplay was supposedly written one day before September 11th, 2001 and contained George W. Bush in the story.

Django Unchained

This script began making the Internet rounds in late April 2011, and hasn’t stopped since. It is dated April 26, 2011. The full title page is written by hand.

The (Supposed) Plot
The story follows a slave by the name of Django (who we now know will be played by Jamie Foxx) taken from his owners by a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz, who needs Django in order to hunt down and kill a gang of murderous brothers. Django is the only person to have ever seen their faces and therefore, knows exactly who they are. He is to help Schultz in exchange for his freedom, but of course runs into some serious trouble along the way.

The Verdict
Most likely true. Look, this script is 166 pages long, dialogue heavy and has a handwritten title page. Some people don’t know this, but Tarantino has even been quoted as saying, “I write scripts the way other writers write books, not the way other writers write scripts. I don’t write on a computer. I write it by hand.” That's exactly how this leaked script reads.

The Master

On February 1, 2010, The Playlist reported that a script leak for the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film was circulating online, and someone writing for the blog The Cinematic Experience of Forizzer did a full review and synopsis of it. When questioned by The Playlist, the author of the blog went into even more detail on his synopsis, going as far as posting a scan of one of the pages of the script.

The (Supposed) Plot
Here is the synopsis posted after the blog article was discovered: "According to the review (and much like the original synopsis), the film focuses on a guy in his 20s called Freddie, who leaves the Navy after his appendix bursts. He swiftly becomes an alcoholic, and begins brewing his own beer, but when it almost kills an immigrant worker, he runs away to sea again, and falls under the spell of a man known as "Master" (Hoffman's character), a family man who is also the leader of his own religion." It also says that the script has references, and possibly slights, toward Scientology.

The Verdict
This one’s a toss-up. The movie hasn’t come out yet, so it is hard to say whether or not this is truly a review of the real script. You can read the blog review and try to compare it to the trailers for “The Master,” but until it is released, it's hard to really tell.