Bootleg ‘Spider-Man’ swings into Russian cinemas despite Hollywood boycott

“Spider-Man” fans dressed up as their favorite web-slinger have swung into cinemas across Russia to see the latest installment of the franchise, despite Sony Pictures ending all of its theatrical releases in the country at the start of the war with Ukraine.

Wearing a homemade costume with the iconic spider symbol drawn onto a red shirt, Almir, 27, was among the hundreds who flocked to the cinema to watch “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in the city of Kazan, which sits around 500 miles east of the capital, Moscow.

“I did it myself, since I didn’t have money for a full suit,” he told NBC News in a Zoom interview last week, adding that demand for tickets was so great that he had to book three weeks in advance.

NBC News agreed not to use Almir’s last name and those of other moviegoers because they were nervous about potentially landing themselves in trouble with authorities for speaking to a foreign media organization.

But while screening the movie “violates both Russian and international law,” everyone, including moviegoers, owners and even Russian authorities, “turns a blind eye to it,” according to the film critic Timur Aliev.

“Formally, a cinema has no right to screen a film without a distribution certificate,” Aliev said. But these were impossible to obtain, as most of the major Hollywood studios had closed down their distribution offices in Russia after the start of the war, he said.

So cinemas illegally obtain digital cinema packages — the standard industry format used to screen films — through third-party distributors and copy them, Aliev said, adding that the owners coordinate a release date among themselves.

Moviegoers buy a ticket to see what is known as a short film under what is known as a “prescreening service,” he said. But while this is what is recorded on the receipt, in reality, “I’ll be watching ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ or ‘Batman,’” Aliev added.

Sony Pictures did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

And authorities appear more than willing to look the other way on the screenings, including those of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

Russia’s Ministry of Culture did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the seeming unwillingness to prosecute cinema owners. But earlier this week, Elena Drapeko, the deputy chair of the culture committee in Russia’s Duma, or parliament, called for law enforcement to act against what she called an “illegal business activity.”

Nonetheless, 18 seconds of the song “Monopoly” by Russian singer Monetochka appears to have been cut out of the copies of the movie being shown in her homeland.

The outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine was labeled a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities in 2022 and forced to flee the country for Lithuania the following year. She said in an Instagram post that she “hadn’t expected anything else,” but she found the song’s removal “painful and sad.”

However, fans dressed in Spider-Man costumes posted videos of themselves with the song playing in the background on social media.

That was only after many were left livid when the movie’s Aug. 6 release date was delayed by three weeks by the distributors of “The Last Warrior: Kolobok,” according to Cinemaplex, a Russian website devoted to the movie industry.

The move prompted a huge online backlash, and authorities were hunting for people who sent death threats on social media to Anton Maslov, the director of the film, which is based on one of the country’s most popular fairy tales, about a piece of bread that comes alive, according to the influential Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti, or “Beware of News” in English.

“It’s a symbolic conflict between a release, heavily funded by the state, about all things Russian, and a major foreign release, heavily funded by a foreign company,” Aliev said, adding that the audience felt “deprived of choice.”

Ordinary moviegoers would have been hit “pretty hard” by the order from above, he said.

Among them, Maria, a mixed-media collage artist from the city of St. Petersburg, who said she watched old “Spider-Man” movies until the new one came out. The delay, she said, was like sitting at a table where “everyone is eating cake” and you are forced to “eat a bowl of crackers” instead.

But on the weekend the latest movie was released, cinemas took in 1.17 billion rubles ($13.9 million) at the box office, according to the Film Distributor’s Bulletin, a Russian trade publication about the movie industry. This was the best summer weekend result in Russian box-office history, it said.

Almir, meanwhile, said it didn’t “miss the mark.”

Taking to Instagram, another moviegoer said the film was like drinking Coca-Cola instead of Dobry Cola, the Russian equivalent often compared unfavorably by customers.

This, they said, gave them “a nostalgia for everything good that used to be.”