A Marvel subreddit has closed its doors after Marvel Studios launched a man-hunt to find those who were involved in the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania script leak.
The Marvel subreddit r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers went private recently after Marvel Studios filed a federal request to Reddit to reveal the identities of those involved with the script leak, such as posting, editing, and maintaining said content. One of the Redditors that Marvel Studios is interested in is u/MSSmods since it was alleged that they were the ones who leaked the script or played a huge role during the leak.
While the leaked script was eventually removed, this Marvel manhunt has led to the closure of the Marvel spoilers subreddit. u/MSSmods released a statement that was retrieved by r/SubredditDrama. It stated that the main subreddit to discuss Marvel films (r/MarvelStudios) was very strict when it comes to leaks and spoilers, hence the creation of r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers. Unfortunately, Disney is now aware of its existence, hence why it shut down.
The Reddit user is also offering the subreddit to someone who’s not only willing to take it over but deal with “potential legal ramifications” that come with it.
“So, I tried to come up with a clever title, but I really couldn’t think of one. I just wanted to take the time to drop in and tell a little story.
“This subreddit was created by me because I hated going to the Marvel Studios subreddit. I wanted to know about the stuff that was coming up, leaks, spoilers, etc…but they had such a strong policy that you couldn’t talk about anything without it being removed, banned, or messaged. (That was back then, I have no idea if it is like that now.) This subreddit started very small…I ran it alone, then I added some mods, then those mods left or lost their minds…It was along time ago (to me) and I actually do not remember all the details anymore.
“Eventually, I was able to get some reliable/responsible help for a page that was never meant to be a serious thing. It grew and grew…now it has grown so large that people from the MCU know of it. Sadly, this means Disney also knows of it. The Mouse always wins…a lesson I learned from South Park. This subreddit will probably be taken down soon, as I am sure a lot of you have seen the news/articles/etc. Ain’t nobody got time for that…and so there will no longer be any mods, the subreddit will operate on its own essentially. If someone wants to step up and takeover the subreddit…including all the legal ramifications (potentially), message this account.”
r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers is one of many subreddits that spoils and leaks content based on what’s shared from other social media pages or whatever could be retried on the internet. So when this subreddit shut down, other Redditors wondered why other pages like r/StarWarsLeaks didn’t have the house of mouse knocking on its door.
It was theorized that what made the r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers subreddit different from the others is that it leaked a whole script and it was alleged that this leak caused Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to receive a poor performance is the box office. The film received an average score of 47 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and has only earned over $106 million during its domestic opening. This led to the film becoming the worst-reviewed Marvel film on Rotten Tomatoes since Eternals and having a record-low box office return. However, it is very unlikely that a subreddit would have that much power to influence a film’s performance, especially since it received a score of 83 percent from the audience.
It’s currently unknown if Reddit will comply with Marvel’s subpoena. The social media website stated that it “it’s committed to protecting its user’s privacy” and that it has “the right to object legal request when appropriate.” But considering that this is The Walt Disney Company, it’s unlikely that Reddit wouldn’t comply.
