Warner’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was the No. 1 pirated movie of the year, with the fantasy pic racking up an estimated 8.4 million illegal downloads.
The next two most-pirated films are “Django Unchained,” logging 8.1 million illegal copies, and “Fast & Furious 6,” which was swiped 7.9 million times, according to data compiled by TorrentFreak.
Hollywood will register record box office receipts of nearly $11 billion in the U.S. this year.
Top-grossing movies that are not on TorrentFreak’s top 10 list include “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” — most likely only because its Nov. 22 release date has not given pirates enough time to poach the pic in big numbers — as well as “Despicable Me 2,” “Monsters University,” “Gravity” and “Man of Steel.”
The data is compiled from various sources including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers; the numbers exclude pirated copies shared on rogue online-streaming sites or cyberlockers.
Rounding out the 2013 film piracy list are
“Iron Man 3″ (7.6 million);
“Silver Linings Playbook” (7.5 million downloads); “
Star Trek Into Darkness” (7.4 million);
“Gangster Squad” (7.2 million); “Now You See Me” (7.0 million);
“The Hangover Part 3″ (6.9 million); and
“World War Z” (6.7 million).
