There is no "moral" argument in favor of the consumer accessing (stealing) something that does not legally belong to him. None. There's no "gray area" to allow what some in this (and other) threads have advocated. You are arguing on crumbling grounds, Kai.
On the consumer side? Of course there is. Here we have in the Batgirl movie a piece of art. That is not a judgement of quality, that is simply acknowledging a work in a medium considered an artform, in this case film. This piece of art is the product of labor from very passionate people working in the field of said artform. A piece of art, mind you, of significant meaning to whole subcultures, whether it be the Latin-American community, the LGBTQ community, or the subculture of superhero fandom. It means a lot to the creators to have their work seen, or even just be able to see it themselves in the future (as seen with the directors discovering they couldn't access the footage on the work server when they were trying to save it).
On the other hand, we have a new boss coming in and cancelling a 90 million dollar production that a lot of people were looking forward to in order to write off what I heard was 20 million dollars in taxes.
And, as
@crookeddy has pointed out, there would be no financial damage to WB/D if there was a leak. No, they don't get paid, but they weren't going to, anyway, by their own choice. Which is one of the reasons such leaks so rarely result in legal action, as
@Christopher pointed out. This isn't classic movie piracy where a movie that is either already released or will soon be released is copied and shared/sold in direct competition to the legally released version, because there is no legally released version.
So, while it may be legally clear-cut, morally it is absolutely debatable. My personal view on the matter, if there's no damage to the "victim", then it isn't really a victim, and there was no moral crime.
And, again, they chose not to make money off of it. They could have. Netflix and Prime would have probably loved to have a Batgirl movie featuring Michael Keaton's Batman. Instead the decision was made that, no, nobody can ever be allowed to see it.
It may also have been a different story if the public had never learned about the movie. But they announced it, the teased us with a lot of marketing, including promo pictures of the lead actress in full costume.
Try as you wish to make this entire conversation about me, it is obvious that I would not seek an illegal copy of what Snyder and/or WB had not officially released. No form of entertainment compels a rational, moral person--to feel they have a "right" to see that which the IP's owners did not want you to see through the legal, official channels. Those who campaigned for the Snyder Cut wanted to see an official version of the completed film, not access anything by stealing it. However, your breathless defense of the kind of behavior in question leads one to believe you're being hyper-defensive because you have no issue receiving stolen property--thinking anyone has a "right" to see entertainment no matter if the IPs owners do not want you to see it.
Interesting.
Again, hypothetical and purely speculative.
But, you know, those images Snyder
illegally leaked, did you look at them?
That test screening (rather, the reaction to it) is actual evidence--unlike the theft advocates who are operating on fanatical dreams based on nothing.
It scored similarly "low" as other movies that have been released to great acclaim, like the It movies, which went on to be very popular and make a lot of money.
But a source of the initial
New York Post article described the movie as "unspeakable" (I previously misremembered that as "unwatchabel", but "unspeakable" is hardly better) and "irredeemable", which is simply hard to imagine, which is why it suggests that there is something else going on. The reports that mostly people of color and other minorities have been fired and/or had their projects cancelled certainly does throw a certain light on comments like that, considering the star iss Latin-American, her co-star is trans, and the directors are of Moroccan descent.
