According to TorrentFreak, the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the first installment of the two-part finale) is currently available on dozens of torrent sites. A quick search by the staff of Mashable proved this to be true.
This news is sure to cause a frenzy among Potter fans -- TorrentFreak reports that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince scored a spot on its "most pirated movies" list with nearly 8 million downloads last year.
The book version of Deathly Hollows also leaked -- back in 2007.
So why is the cinematic leak only 36 minutes long? TorrentFreak postulates that Warner Bros. Pictures feared a leak, so limited the time of the screeners to ensure that the whole film didn't make it to the web.
Seeing as how the clip has hit the Internet mere days before the premiere, we doubt it will have a negative effect on box office sales come Friday -- unless, of course, those first 36 minutes are irrevocably horrible.
The last time we saw a leak of the magnitude was probably that of Wolverine, which leaked a month early, yet was still a box office success.