How ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ got Roger Friedman fired

What the Fox entertainment columnist's termination says about movie piracy

Roger Friedman discovered “just what Rupert Murdoch means by ‘zero tolerance’ when it comes to movie piracy,” said Brooks Barnes in The New York Times. The Foxnews.com entertainment columnist was fired over the weekend for his recent review of a leaked, unfinished version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the upcoming film by 20th Century Fox, which is owned by Murdoch.

What was Friedman thinking? said Bruce Simmons in Screen Rant. Not only was it foolish for him to review the movie, but then he “bragged” about how easy it was to find and download the pirated version. “When you work for the bank, you should not brag that you stole their money!”

But this raises an even bigger issue, said Josh Tyler in Cinema Blend. It “illustrates how flat-out impossible it is to stop people from downloading movies.” If Fox can’t even prevent “their own people from engaging in illegal downloading, what good is the ongoing war against the ever-growing number of domestic and international downloaders going to do?”