Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2008
Written by Ernesto on December 11, 2008As 2008 moves toward its end, we have been taking a a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. Following our Top 10 games post where ‘Spore’ headlined, we now take a look at movies. Unsurprisingly, The Dark Knight comes out on top, with the rest of the chart featuring a few surprising entries, and some unexpected absentees.
Mirroring its success at the box office, The Dark Knight is leading this list of 2008’s most pirated movies on BitTorrent. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the sequel to ‘Batman Begins’ holds the record for the best opening week and weekend in movie history, and has grossed close to a billion dollars worldwide.
The film’s success doesn’t stop at the box office either. Earlier this week the DVD was released, and on the first day in stores 3 million copies were sold in the United States, Canada and the UK.
Alongside these impressive real-world sales, the film beat the competition on BitTorrent and other filesharing networks too. With more than 7 million downloads on BitTorrent alone, The Dark Knight now holds the title of most pirated movie of 2008. Comments on various BitTorrent sites reveal that many downloaders obtained an illegal copy after they had already watched the movie in the movie theater.
As with every other blockbuster, ‘The Dark Knight’ was leaked onto the Internet in various formats. It began right after the premiere in July with a cammed version, which was celebrated by the folks from The Pirate Bay. The ‘cam’ was followed by a DVD-screener in early September, and a DVD in November. The latter release turned out to be the most popular among filesharers.
As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office, and on filesharing networks. ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, for example, came in second at the box office, but only came in 30th place in the download chart. On the contrary, ‘The Bank Job’ is the third most pirated movie on BitTorrent, but just 66th at the box office.
The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. All formats, including cammed versions are counted, and based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.
| rank | movie | downloads | worldwide grosses |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | The Dark Knight | 7,030,000 | $996,500,000 |
| 2 | The Incredible Hulk | 5,840,000 | $262,300,000 |
| 3 | The Bank Job | 5,410,000 | $64,300,000 |
| 4 | You Don’t Mess With The Zohan | 5,280,000 | $201,800,000 |
| 5 | National Treasure: Book of Secrets | 5,240,000 | $457,400,000 |
| 6 | Juno | 5,190,000 | $231,300,000 |
| 7 | Tropic Thunder | 4,900,000 | $187,200,000 |
| 8 | I Am Legend | 4,870,000 | $584,200,000 |
| 9 | Forgetting Sarah Marshall | 4,400,000 | $104,500,000 |
| 10 | Horton Hears a Who! | 4,360,000 | $296,945,439 |
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47 Responses
The Dark Knight - Leading the pack and waayyyyy ahead, because of the Blue ray release i guess… awesome!
The Joker: The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules!
The other moves had blue ray releases too. (@#1)
The Dark Knight FTW :D
@3, true… but Batman didnt suck :))
I meant that Batman kind of got renewed due to the BR release, i know a lot of um, friends who re-downloaded it again…
The dark night is definitely the best. It’s in my top 5 favorite movies of all time.
Ok, I just noticed that Hulk is the second highest. It definitely shouldn’t be on there.
What a surprise, the Dark Knight is the most downloaded movie, and it STILL managed to earn almost a billion dollars. :)
It looks like piracy is not killing the movie industry after all.
I went to see it 4 times. And then of course downloaded it :)
I just shows you that if you supply the quality, you’ll have no problem getting the viewers.
Good addition displaying the total box office gross.
We can see that downloading has not hurt these films in the slightest, even the Bank Job did relatively well and that was a small release.
@#9
Agreed!
Wow, I kinda figured Dark Knight would be at the very top! Seems logical.
jess
http://www.privacy-tools.at.tc
Whatever happened to “Get Smart”?
it got dumb ( @ 13 )
Like me, I’m sure most people who downloaded and watched ‘Zohan’ immediately deleted it, and those who paid immediately slit their wrists.
Zohan……………. Raaaarrrrrhhhhggghhrrrrr
zohan was the dumbest movie ive watched since “Teeth”.
Uh…Iron Man?
Something else to remember. TDK has a very nice screen or workprint (dont remember which) leaked fairly early on. Movies like Iron Man, never had a good quality version leaked early. I think that plays huge into these numbers.
I found this year sad for movies, I haven’t seen any of the movies on the list and don’t plan to…
@da_game_06:
Well you must have been living under a rock then. Or just don’t get out much.
Did I mention you’re also a dumb fuck? :)
Now get your lazy ass up outta your house and actually go see some movies. Go do something at least fatty.
@ #20
You really must be living under a rock and are using dial-up or something because there is abso-freakin-lutely NO reason to not have seen The Dark Knight!
Tropic Thunder was pretty damn funny too.
More like Tropic Diarrhea
Or Diarrhea Thunder…..he he he
#19: Actually there was an excellent telesync cam version out of Iron Man almost as soon as it hit theaters.
I know people hate cams, but the version available was put through quite a number of filters so the picture was quite decent and the sound was excellent.
PS- I think it’s worth noting that I also hate cams and this is the only cam I was able to watch.
I download most of the movies that come out. Any that are on the first page of TPB sorted by seeders. So that gets most of them. But it does not mean I do not like any of them.
I am unable to watch The Dark Knight. I am an Aboriginal Australian and it’s against my people’s religion to see images of the deceased.
load of crap results doesn’t even state sources
You don’t watch the Zohan.
Tropic Thunder, please, now I know you’re playing
dark knight, best movie for a long time, would NOT like to follow that but iron man was quality too
the best comedy?
@23: I have not seen the Dark Knight either, and I don’t intend to. It just doesn’t look good - especially the Joker, who they changed the character of completely.
Now, National Treasure: Book Of Secrets? I’m happy that one landed up there. It was a good movie.
I enjoy how ignorant people remarks without reading. It the most pirated movie. It been getting downloaded since before they put that on Blu Ray format. Idiot.
I think the disparity in box office vs. torrenting makes sense. I for one only go to the movies when seeing it on the big screen matters (ie. lots of action/effects). But for comedies, dramas (which I consider bank job despite action/psych thriller elements), etc. it simply isn’t worth the continually inflating price of admission when I’m not getting anything “extra” by doing it.
BTW, Batman is the best movie of the year and if you disagree then fuck you on oscar night.
fuck yeah the incredible hulk SHOULD be on there that movie was fucking awesome. its weird that iron man isnt on there though
The Dark Knight was not really a good movie. Everyone wanted to see the late Heath Ledger, it was the reason. And the 1 Billion Gross was a fluke.
Where is Iron Man?
ledger was awesome you turd!people watched it because they heared about not because of his death or the crow would have been up for oscars
i guess $1000000000 gross is not enough for the movie studio that produced dark knight.
they arent thinking right when they think all those downloads are lost revenue, half of those people go to the cinema and see it too!
The Dark Knight what a suprise
Kill the cast and win an Oscar
what out clebs
there’s a few I would love to see win an Oscar.
ROFLMAO
Go shoot a line instead of shittin ur brains
Esox
The Dark Knight is one of the most overhyped and overrated movies ever.
#4 on IMDB Top 250… LoL… sad world we live in :-/
NOTE TO GREASY THIEF PUNKS:
Dark Knight’s success at the box office was largely a result not only of it being a good movie, but also because of the extraordinary lengths the studio went through to make sure it was delayed on rip-off sites. All trailers to exhibitors had embedded tracking numbers and the operation was high security. As a result, all the greasy little punks in their parents’ basements could download was some crap camcorder version until long after Dark Knight had a chance at box office gold. It sure worked. Hopefully the studios have learned something.
Seeing as this list is for all the movies for 2008 can you please expand it to the top 50 or so, so I can see where some of the other biggies finished?
Boy, that Dark Knight was one Good Movie Though. Hey, to make some very good money online, check out
www dot thespidersystem dot ws
The Darkknight was a great movie
If you want to watch free movies online go to
http://nowplayinghere.com
TDK n Iron Man Roxx
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