Damon Lindelof - the LOST scribe behind 20th Century Fox's Promethus - accidentally tweeted a video overnight showing the last 30 minutes of the Ridley Scott's Alien inspired non-prequel ahead of its Friday release.
Although only visable for a few moments, the video was quickly posted to Youtube and other video sharing sites where it has since garnered millions of views.
The slip-up comes amidst a heavy campaign of secrecy surrounding the movie. Charlize Theron, one of Promethius's stars, joked during a Tuesday appearance that if she even spoke a word about the film to the host that snipers in the audience would shoot her.
The leaked copy was apparently a screener stored on Lindeof's hard drive which had somehow been uploaded to a Google Drive service with an automated remote Tweet generator function which autofilled his tweet with a link address.
Lindelof quickly realized his error and deleted the tweet, then posted an apology before deleting that:
Lindelof has a history of rogue tweeting, famously claiming that Mad Men star January Jones "sucks at acting".
One LOST fan commented today " I wish Twitter existed during LOST - we might have actually found out what was really going on with the island."
Executives at the studio are terrified that the slip up will affect the film's opening numbers. Although most copies have been removed from the legitimate video sharing sites though DCMA requests, they continue to be distributed illegally.
Rupert Murdoch - the chairman of 20th Century Fox's parent News Corporation - has reportedly doubled the amount of panda blood he has injected into his heart to better deal with the stress of tomorrow's bow.
