Many have been looking forward to the digital release of Marvel’s Thor Ragnarok and it appears that a pre-order blunder on iTunes has caused the movie to be leaked online. Pre-order customers using Vudu and MoviesAnywhere were offered the movie for immediate download via iTunes. They predictably downloaded the copies and they’re now being furiously pirated online via torrents.

It’s not common for HD copies of movies to leak online before they’re officially released and when that happens, it’s evident that something went wrong somewhere. Sometimes, it’s due to a hack or a DVD screener disc that got stolen, but sometimes it happens because of totally unexpected reasons as well.

Thor Ragnarok was going to be released digitally on February 19th and on disc come February 16th. It seems that a blunder on iTunes has caused the $180 million movie to be leaked online in up to 1080p HD resolution.

A Reddit user mentioned that he pre-ordered Thor Ragnarok on Vudu and since it was linked to his iTunes, the movie showed up in this iTunes library the next morning. He could watch it in HD and even download it. That Reddit post has since been deleted, though.

It’s not clear how the movie went live for him in iTunes ahead of the digital release date even when he didn’t buy it on Apple’s platform. He purchased the movie’s 4K version on VUDU which was linked to his MoviesAnywhere account that was in turn linked to his iTunes.

Others went about the same method and reported that they could access the movie in iTunes as well. This obviously resulted in illegal copies making their way on torrent sites and there will be no stopping them now.

No word as yet from Apple regarding what happened behind-the-scenes that enabled this movie to be released digitally ahead of schedule.

Source: ubergizmo