With the blogosphere full of leaked scripts for “The Avengers”, set photos from “The Amazing Spider-Man” and never ending casting and locations rumours for “The Dark Knight Rises”; am I the only person on the Internet who isn’t obsessed with ruining a film for myself?

Towards the end of April, a movie website told the world they’d been offered something that would excite comic and films fan as much as Christians finding a Newer Testament; a script for “The Avengers”. Pictures seem to authenticate the script, titled “Group Hug”, and that it had been misplaced by one of the biggest stars of the film, Samuel L. Jackson.

The seller said that this property would raise the site’s profile and online hit rate. In a way, it would, as I’m sure plenty of people would be intrigued to see what Joss Whedon has planned for Marvel’s mightiest titans, but surely it would also have the reverse effect and drive people away. I know I wouldn’t revisit a site that published an illegally acquired script and nor would I want to read a script for a film I was looking forward to seeing.

You may disagree, you may even argue that it’s no different from reading a novel before seeing it’s movie adaptation. You’re probably right, you still have to go through the process of sitting down and actually reading something, but I’ll wager it’s nowhere near as rich in detail or even, dare I say it, fun as reading a book.

Leaked scripts are nothing new in the age of the Internet and there are many forums dedicated to sharing and “acquiring” scripts for up-and-coming features. Just go on Google and search for “leaked script” and you’ll find anything from Quentin Tarantino’s next offering, “Django Unchained”, to “Transformers 3”, “The Dark Knight Rises” and even “The Inbetweeners” movie.

Most of these are either fake, planted by studios to create buzz for the film a long time in advance of production, or are speculative scripts written by avid fans in the hope that someone will read it and give them their big break in Hollywood. So with that in mind, why go out looking for a leaked script? You’re only going to end up wasting your time reading something by someone who has no proper channel for their talent and potentially get very cross about it if it’s rubbish. All for no reason.

As casting tends to come after writing in a film’s production that’s what we’ll move onto next. Earlier this year we were treated to the news that Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway would be joining the cast of “The Dark Knight Rises” as Bane and Selina Kyle respectively. This news was met with the usual Internet chatter of actors either being completely miscast or the film makers’ getting it right on the nose. People seemed thrilled to bits about Hardy but less so about Hathaway; the same people no doubt said the same thing about Heath Ledger being cast as The Joker and we all know how that turned out.

This was soon followed by the news that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard were also now on board and the rumour mills went into over drive. Gordon-Levitt was rumoured as playing everyone from Carmine Falcone’s son, The Holiday Killer, to a reincarnated Joker whilst everyone seemed sure that Cotillard would play Talia Al Ghul. The two have recently been confirmed as playing John Blake, a Gotham City beat cop, and Miranda Tate, a Wayne Enterprise board member. That isn’t to say that this isn’t all smoke and mirrors, but is it worth getting in such a tizzy over?

My next beef is with set pictures. The latest offender, or should that be victim, is “The Amazing Spider-Man”, due for release next summer. Since this started filming the Internet has been awash with pictures of a blonde Emma Stone, a suited Andrew Garfield, a made-up Rhys Ifans and a dying Martin Sheen. These pictures beg the question, do I really care at this point? I’m interested in seeing the suit and comparing it to the one featured in the Raimi movies, but so far there’s only been a few official pictures released that do it justice, the rest are all grainy mobile phone snap shots. As for the dying Martin Sheen, I’d class this as something of a spoiler as I now know exactly what to look out for comes the film’s release.

With most of my articles, this is very much my opinion. You may feel the exact opposite, you may love tracking down little titbits like pictures and scripts; I know at least one member of the ESLF staff started reading the “Django Unchained” script. I suppose what all of this really boils down to is whether you prefer going into a film “blind” and being pleasantly surprised for a change or to sit there, ticking boxes as you go through the motions.