I have never advocated piracy of any form, nor will I ever do so. My personal belief is that if you are going to watch a movie, play a game, or read a comic you should buy them first. But, the listing of the top pirated movies can possibly show off some trends that would be interesting.
Most people tend to use torrent sites to acquire these pirated movies, and the folks over at Torrent Freak, via ComicBookMovie.com, have compiled a list of the top 10 pirated movies of this year. Personally, I was surprised at which movies were at the top of the list.
1. Project X
8,720,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $100,931,865
2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
8,500,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $694,713,380
3. The Dark Knight Rises
8,230,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $1,081,041,287
4. The Avengers
8,110,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $1,511,757,910
5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
7,850,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $543,848,418
6. 21 Jump Street
7,590,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $201,585,328
7. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
7,420,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $232,617,430
8. The Dictator
7,330,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $177,547,352
9. Ice Age: Continental Drift
6,960,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $875,093,094
10. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
6,740,000 Downloads
Worldwide Gross: $712,171,856
I was surprised to see that neither The Avengers nor The Dark Knight Rises were at the top of the list. I know that a lot of people, myself included, saw these movies multiple times in the theater, but based on the rampant box office success I expected that there would be many illegal downloads of the movie.
I think the reason that so many people might have pirated these movies is due to the staggered release dates that we are starting to see. For example, The Avengers was released in Europe nearly 3 weeks before North America saw the movie. Many fans probably couldn’t hold off and downloaded the movie so that they could watch it, and possibly avoid spoilers. Some folks probably rationalize this by saying well I’ll download the movie and then watch it in theaters. That makes everything okay right? Whether its okay or not is up to each person individuality, my opinion remains that piracy is still wrong.
Another surprising thing here is that The Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t even on the top 10 list. I thought for sure that it would have cracked the top 10. The number one movie was one I hadn’t ever heard of, and it seems that it might have been impacted the most by piracy. Let’s do a quick breakdown of the numbers. Project X made approximately $101 million. It’s then downloaded 8,720,000 times and we’ll assume that the average movie ticket price is $8.
$8 X 8,720,000 = $69,760,000
If all of the people who pirated Project X had paid to watch the movie in theater then it would have almost doubled its box office take. The simple fact is that we know Project X made the least amount of money out of all the movies in the top 10. But is that due primarily to piracy or being released in limited theaters? When comparing this movie to the others in the list it would seem that piracy really wasn’t a major impact on their box office haul. That would make me think the low numbers for Project X are more about the limited theaters it was shown in. There’s also the fact that I never recall seeing it on the marquee at my local theater.
So, what’s the takeaway here? Is piracy ruining movies at the box office? Well looking at the numbers it would be hard to say that it is. The top 3 and 4 pirated movies both grossed over $1 billion dollars which are just insane numbers. But even if piracy didn’t effect these films overall box office take does it make it right to pirate them? I’ll leave that to you to decide.
