The sci-fi remake clocked up almost 11 million BitTorrent downloads in the eight months since its release, making it the pick of the pirates for 2009.
What do Captain Kirk, Wolverine and Harry Potter have in common? They all starred in the the most downloaded movies of 2009, according to BitTorrent blog
TorrentFreak.
TorrentFreak says it harvested the data “from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers” and count all versions, from ‘cam’ editions captured using a video camera in a cinema to rips of official DVD releases.
“You stole my movie! You stole my royalties! This is how we deal with pirates on Vulcan!”
While Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took second place behind Star Trek, Guy Ritchie’s Brit gangster flick RocknRolla was a surprising bronze medal winner.
Hardly a success in global box office terms – Torrent Freak notes its worldwide gross at a mere US$25m against US$385 for Star Trek and a staggering US$834m for Transformers sequel – TorrentFreak editor-in-chief ‘Ernesto’ explains “part of the (BitTorrent) success of RocknRolla is that it was released by the infamous uploader aXXo whose releases are always guaranteed to have at least a few million downloads.”
The complete list of 2009’s most downloaded BitTorrent films is:
1 Star Trek – 10,960,000 downloads
2 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – 10,600,000
3 RocknRolla – 9,430,000
4 The Hangover – 9,180,000
5 Twilight – 8,720,000
6 District 9 – 8,280,000
7 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 7,930,000
8 State of Play – 7,440,000
9 X-Men Origins: Wolverine – 7,200,000
10 Knowing – 6,930,000