Every day millions of people use BitTorrent to download and share movies. But what are all these people downloading?
For nearly half a decade we have compiled weekly and yearly lists of the most popular downloads, and following on from Netflix’s publication of the most rented movies of all time, we today present the equivalent for BitTorrent downloads.
With an estimated 21 million downloads, Avatar is the most pirated movie of all time, followed by The Dark Knight and Transformers with about 19 million downloads each. Interestingly enough, none of the above films were present in Netflix’s list.
The BitTorrent and Netflix lists do show some overlap, as Inception and The Departed make an appearance in both.
Despite the massive piracy, the films below have not done too shabbily at the box-office. Avatar is the best grossing movie of all time and The Dark Knight is third, right before Star Trek.
—
The list below is based on statistics is gathered from public BitTorrent trackers, dating back to early 2006. As BitTorrent’s usage was only a fraction of what it is today in the years before, we expect the list below to cover all the most downloaded movies on BitTorrent.
| rank | movie | ± downloads | worldwide grosses |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | Avatar (2009) | 21 million | $2,782,275,172 |
| 2 | The Dark Knight (2008) | 19 million | $1,001,921,825 |
| 3 | Transformers (2007) | 19 million | $709,709,780 |
| 4 | Inception (2010) | 18 million | $825,408,570 |
| 5 | The Hangover (2009) | 17 million | $467,483,912 |
| 6 | Star Trek (2008) | 16 million | $385,680,446 |
| 7 | Kick-Ass (2010) | 15 million | $96,188,903 |
| 8 | The Departed (2006) | 14 million | 289,847,354 |
| 9 | The Incredible Hulk (2008) | 14 million | $263,427,551 |
| 10 | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) | 14 million | $963,420,425 |
