Disney held to ransom

HACKERS who claim to have stolen an unreleased Disney movie are now threatening to make it available to the public, according to Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Iger didn’t mention the movie’s title but told staff in the US hackers are asking for a large bitcoin payment to keep the film under wraps.

Disney’s next two releases are the Gold Coast-filmed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, due out on May 25 (Australian time), and Cars 3, due out on June 15 .

Both are big-budget franchise titles expected to gross more than $US500 million at the global box office.

Iger said the hackers have threatened to release the film in five-minute snippets and could follow through after Iger vowed Disney would not pay.

The saga is eerily similar to the recent high-profile leak of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (OITNB), which saw hackers breach the security of a Hollywood-based post-production company that counts Netflix among its customers.

The hacker tried to strongarm the post-production company before targeting Netflix with ransom demands.

When Netflix didn’t budge, 10 episodes of the still-unreleased fifth season of OITNB were released to the public on torrent website Pirate Bay last month. It’s unclear if the two incidents are connected.

The hackers who leaked OITNB claimed to have also gotten their hands on at least 30 additional TV shows and movies.