John Campea is a name that’s been plastered on the Twitter walls on Marvel Cinematic Universe fans for the last few days. That’s because for those out of the loop, Campea is the one who “accidentally” leaked some very crucial stills from Spider-Man: No Way Home, stills that confirmed the inclusion of key characters from other universes in the movie. Campea also has a close relationship to the studios so this leak definitely may have done some damage to that.

In a live stream, Campea opened up about the response to the photos he posted. A few minutes after posting the pictures, he got a call from a Sony representative informing him that the pics were “probably real”. He squandered to remove them from Twitter and deleted his original post. But as the adage goes, what ends up on the internet stays on the internet.

I post it, and then five minutes later, I get this call from somebody – I wont say who – saying that, ‘Yeah, uh… these pictures are probably real.’ I’m like ‘are you sure?’ And, like… ‘Uh, look, I don’t know 100% for sure, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that these are most likely real. And I’m like, ‘well, shit.'” So I immediately jump back on Twitter, again only about five minutes had passed, and I delete them immediately.

Campea did try to justify his genuine lack of knowledge about the leaks in question by posing a valid argument. The pictures were watermarked with his name. That’s not something you’d expect someone to do if they knew the leaks were genuine, so the fact that the stills had his name watermarked suggests Campea may have legitimately believed these were good photoshops.

I was talking to one of the studio reps today, I’ll say studio that has the letter ‘S’ in it, and they basically said to me, like, ‘I assume you thought these things were fake because you put your watermark on it. I don’t expect that you would try to steal the Mona Lisa and then leave your business card behind for the cops to call you.’ And I’m like, ‘yes! If I had thought they were real, and I was going to share them online, I would absolutely not put my watermark on it, so everybody knew the leak came from me.’

Campea further went on to elaborate on his absolute hatred for spoilers, going so far as to suggest that people who get early access to movie premieres should be made to sign NDAs and fined $1 million or more for violating those NDAs by revealing spoilers.

Now, something you should know about me. I hate, hate leaks. I don’t mind spoilers, myself, for me, but I know that there are a lot of people that are very sensitive to spoilers, and I hate spreading spoilers. As a matter of fact, I put on Twitter … when everybody was spoiling the end of Eternals , I got on Twitter and said ‘I think if you get invited to an advanced screening of something, you should just sign a non-disclosure agreement with a minimum million-dollar fine, that if you sign that non-disclosure agreement, you should get fined a million bucks if you then come out of that movie having signed a non-disclosure and then tell everybody what’s in the movie.’

Like, I hate spoilers. Hate them. Even though they don’t affect me too much, I hate people spreading spoilers to ruin the enjoyment for other people. I hate that. I would never intentionally do that.

Lastly, Campea did feel guilty about having potentially spoiled what could have been among the movie’s biggest surprises had he not posted those leaks. He further expresses his regret knowing if these leaks are true (and in all likelihood they are), he may have spoiled the most pivotal moments of No Way Home.

The reality is, if these pictures end up being real, and I don’t know that they are, to be honest… Let’s say Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are in the movie, and they don’t show Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in a trailer soon, I’m going to feel terrible about this. I mean, absolutely. I wish… that I just made the images myself, or that someone else just slapped a watermark on it, or that I was actually in cahoots with Sony and Disney. I got sent these pictures, I thought they were fake, I slapped my watermark on it because I wanted credit for sharing them, put them up. As soon as I heard that they could be real, I deleted them immediately. And I didn’t even share all the pictures.

So what do you guys think? Do you feel Campea is telling the truth and he simply “accidentally” posted those pictures without true knowledge of their authenticity? Or do you feel he’s making up elaborate lies and wanted to go for the massive attention that he would get leaking this once in a generation type of crossover? Let me know your thoughts and your angle on this in the comments below.

Spider-Man: No Way Home releases in theaters on December 17, 2021.