Tyler Aquilina reports in Variety on The Most Pirated Film Titles of 2022.
“Exclusive data provided to Variety Intelligence Platform by piracy-focused research firm Muso measured 2022 activity across a wide range of piracy sites, including illegal streaming, torrent, web download and stream-ripping platforms. The results reveal that superhero films held a dominant share of illegal viewing in 2022, with Marvel and DC releases collectively accounting for 70% of piracy demand (that is, illicit streams, downloads and the like) for the top 10 most pirated film titles of the year.”
Here are the top ten 2022 most pirated movies:
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (21%)
- The Batman (13%)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (10%)
- Thor: Love and Thunder (9%)
- Black Adam (9%)
- Uncharted (8%)
- Eternals (8%)
- Top Gun: Maverick (8%)
- Jurassic World Dominion (7%)
- Encanto (6%)
“Spikes in a film’s piracy tend to coincide with its release on digital platforms, which enables the availability of high-quality pirated streams or downloads, as opposed to bootleg ‘cam-rip’ versions illicitly recorded in a theater.”
My take: there are two takeaways for me here: 1) once a film streams, it will be pirated immediately (not sure about VOD though,) and therefore 2) theatrical distribution is still a viable way to generate revenue and word-of-mouth for a film.