“The Hobbit” is the Most Pirated Film of 2013 Followed by "Django Unchained" and "Fast & Furious 6"

Released in December 2012, Peter Jackson’s mega-budget fantasy epic “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” was a huge success at the box office throughout the year 2013. This insanely popular film has turned out to be the most pirated film of the year 2013, beating out Quentin Tarantino’s Western Drama film “Django Unchained” and Just Lin’s “Fast & Furious 6”, which are ranked at second and third place respectively. While the Highest-Grossing Movie of 2013 – Iron Man 3 – is at fourth place followed by Oscar nominated film “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Star Trek into Darkness”, according to a report from TorrentFreak.

The Hobbit tops the list with 8.4 million downloads while Iron Man 3 was illegally downloaded 7.6 million times. Both were highest grossing movies of 2013 with $1.2 billion and $0.3 billion earning worldwide respectively. While “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Gangster Squad” were two least grossing films of the year 2013 and are listed at fifth and seventh place in the list with 7.5 million and 7.2 million projected downloads, respectively. Ruben Fleischer’s crime drama “Gangster Squad” seems quite strange result among the other top ten films, as it is comparatively less seen and little-talked-about.

“Django Unchained” and the “Fast & Furious 6” were downloaded 8.1 million and 7.9 million times respectively. Top-grossing films of last year which are not listed among most pirated films are “Man of Steel”, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, “Despicable Me 2” and “Gravity”, mainly due to the fact that these were launched in last three months of the year.

Pirates appear to have the same taste of films as the honest people who actually pay to watch the movie. Almost all top pirated movies were box office hits including “Now You See Me”, “The Hangover Part III” and “World War Z”, which are ranked at eighth, ninth and tenth spot in the list with estimated downloads 7 million, 6.9 million and 6.7 million respectively.

Piracy of TV shows is also greatly affected by illegal downloading and various industry affiliates who timidly approved it for promotion purposes. Director of “Game of Thrones”, David Petrarca, has termed piracy as an activity with a positive aspect. But most of the industry people still are anxious about the influence of piracy on profits, as Peter Jackson had said few years back that “piracy could lead to the death of films."

The piracy data is accumulated from a range of sources. Previous week, "Game of Thrones" was declared as Most Pirated TV show of the year.