We recently ran a story about the 10 most pirated movies of all time. Avatar was #1 on the list, followed by The Dark Knight, Inception, The Hangover, JJ Abrams Star Trek, Kick Ass, The Departed, The Incredible Hulk, and Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End.
So what were the top pirated movies of 2011?
According to TorrentFreak, Fast Five, a big hit with a worldwide take of over $600 million, was downloaded 9.3 million times.
Fast Five was followed by The Hangover Part II with 8.8 million downloads, Thor with 8.3 million, Source Code with 7.9 million, I Am Number Four with 7.7 million, Sucker Punch with 7.2 million, 127 Hours with 6.9 million, Rango with 6.5 million, The King’s Speech with 6.3 million, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part Two came in tenth place with 6 million downloads.
As Kurt Orzeck report on The Wrap, “Some of the year’s other biggest grosser at the global box office are notably absent from the top 10…The total number of downloads among this year’s top 10 was lower than in 2010, which could be attributed to more legal alternatives,” like Netflix streaming, but at the same time the number of active downloaders on BitTorrent hasn’t decreased, with TorrentFreak speculating “the downloads may simply be spread out over more titles in 2011.”
TorrentFreak also noted that with 127 Hours and Sucker Punch, “Both were hugely popular among the downloading public, while their box office grosses were relatively modest.” (Like they’ll often yell in the theater when a coming attraction doesn’t look good: “RENTAL!” Or maybe these days theatergoers are yelling, “ILLEGAL DOWNLOAD!”)
As the L.A. Times pointed out, 127 Hours was released in 2010 “but gained more attention early the year due to its multiple Oscar nominations.”
And as the Hollywood Reporter notes, 9.3 million downloads of Fast Five is also a big drop from Avatar, which was downloaded 16 million times last year. As Ben Fritz speculates, piracy could also be down “simply due to the lower popularity of this year’s releases, as evidenced by the 4% decline in box office recipts so far this year.”
