Having hit the 750,000-illegal-downloads mark in the first 20 hours, some observers started making predictions that Sony Pictures’ now infamous The Interview comedy movie would end up being history’s most downloaded movie.
Initially released digitally for paid access in the US, The Interview has already been legally streamed more than 2million times, underscoring the argument that people are willing to pay to legally stream movies online.
[related-posts]
Of course, Sony’s controversial political comedy movie was dealt a helping hand by the controversy surrounding its release after Sony cancelled its Christmas premiere citing intense cyber attacks.
Most of the other people online still prefer to get access to movies without paying for them; usually using torrent software.
So what did torrent users want to see — but not pay for — the most in 2014?
Excipio, a firm that tracks online copyright infringement, found that the year’s most pirated movies (between Jan. 1 and Dec. 23) range from serious Oscar contenders (12 Years a Slave) to children’s classics (Frozen) to … Michael Bay (Transformers: Age of Extinction).
Here’s the list of 2014’s top 20 pirated movies and the number of downloads, as published by Variety.
1. “The Wolf of Wall Street”: 30.035 million (Paramount, Dec. 25, 2013)
2. “Frozen”: 29.919 million (Disney, Nov. 27, 2013)
3. “RoboCop”*: 29.879 million (MGM, Feb. 12, 2014; and Orion, July 17, 1987)
4. “Gravity”: 29.357 million (Warner Bros., Oct. 4, 2013)
5. “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”: 27.627 million (Warner Bros., Dec. 13, 2013)
6. “Thor: The Dark World”: 25.749 million (Disney/Marvel, Nov. 8, 2013)
7. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”: 25.628 million (Disney/Marvel, April 4, 2014)
8. “The Legend of Hercules”: 25.137 million (Summit, Jan. 10, 2014)
9. “X-Men: Days of Future Past”: 24.380 million (20th Century Fox, May 23, 2014)
10. “12 Years a Slave”: 23.653 million (Fox Searchlight, Oct. 18, 2013)
11. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”: 23.543 million (Lionsgate, Nov. 22, 2013)
12. “American Hustle”: 23.143 million (Sony/Columbia, Dec. 13, 2013)
13. “300: Rise of an Empire”: 23.096 million (Warner Bros., March 7, 2014)
14. “Transformers: Age of Extinction”: 21.65 million (Paramount, June 27, 2014)
15. “Godzilla”: 20.956 million (Warner Bros., May 16, 2014)
16. “Noah”: 20.334 million (Paramount, March 28, 2014)
17. “Divergent”: 20.312 million (Lionsgate, March 21, 2014)
18. “Edge of Tomorrow”: 20.299 million (Warner Bros., June 6, 2014)
19. “Captain Phillips”: 19.817 million (Sony/Columbia, Oct. 11, 2013)
20. “Lone Survivor”: 19.130 million (Universal, Dec. 25, 2013)
* Combines data for both 1987 and 2014 versions.
