The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese's dark comedy about a stock market swindler, tops a list of the most pirated movies of 2014.
The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was illegally downloaded about 30 million times by torrent users this year, according to piracy tracking company Excipio and quoted in Variety.
Disney's smash hit, Frozen, came in a close second with 29.919 million downloads — despite worldwide sales that exceed $1.2 billion dollars US, according industry website Box Office Mojo.
The list, complied between Jan. 1 and Dec. 23 of this year, includes critical and box office successes of 2013 and 2014, with a notable exception.
RoboCop (2014) is a PG-rated rehash of the 1987 R-rated original. (Kerry Hayes/Sony/Columbia Pictures/Associated Press) MGM's RoboCop complicated the tally because the studio's 2014 reboot shares the same title as the 1987 original. Torrent site users downloaded both movies a combined 29.879 million times, but it is not clear how the numbers break down for the individual films.
At the box office, the most recent version of the sci-fi shoot 'em up has grossed more than $242 million worldwide.
Hercules, starring Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson earned $243 million at the global box office since July, but more pirates downloaded the rival epic The Legend of Hercules. (Paramount Pictures) Also confusing the statistics were duplicate titles for the the action epicsThe Legend of Hercules starring Kellan Lutz and Hercules starring Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson.
- Excipio explained that the latter movie was not as popular among internet thieves than the former, despite clobbering it at the global box office. (In theatres, The Legend of Hercules earned $61.2 million and Hercules took in $243.3 million.)
So, what else were sticky-fingered torrent site users stealing this year?
Here's the 20 top pirated movies of 2014, ranked by downloads:
- The Wolf of Wall Street, 30.035 million
- Frozen, 29.919 million
- RoboCop, 29.879 million
- Gravity, 29.357 million
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, 27.627 million
- Thor: The Dark World, 25.749 million
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 25.628 million
- The Legend of Hercules, 25.137 million
- X-Men: Days of Future Past, 24.380 million
- 12 Years a Slave, 23.653 million
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, 23.543 million
- American Hustle, 23.143 million
- 300: Rise of an Empire, 23.096 million
- Transformers Age of Extinction, 21.65 million
- Godzilla, 20.956 million
- Noah, 20.334 million
- Divergent, 20.312 million
- Edge of Tomorrow, 20.299 million
- Captain Phillips, 19.817 million
- Lone Survivor, 19.130 million