Project X posterThe top 10 pirated movies of 2012, published by torrentfreak.com, show Project X as the most pirated movie of last year, topping the likes of The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Interestingly, Project X grossed the least of the 10, only $100,931,865, only just over half of the next least grossing movie: 21 Jump Street.

Whether these unauthorized downloads are a serious threat to box office revenues is unclear. Earlier this year researchers found no evidence that BitTorrent piracy hurts US box office returns. There is a link between downloads and revenues internationally, which the researchers attributed to long release windows.

says Ernesto, Editor in Chief of torrentfreak.com. But there seems to be a clear negative correlation between the worldwide gross and download statistics here.

The eagle-eyed among you would have noticed that Skyfall, the top-grossing UK movie of all time, is not on the pirated movies list. This clearly suggests there is some correlation between the number of box office viewers and the number of pirate viewers.

Perhaps the piracy popularity of Project X is due to its audience. The films protagonists, for want of a better word, are celebrating a 17th birthday, clearly attracting viewers of a similar age, if not younger. The film holds an 18 certificate due to sexual references, drug use and very strong language. This seems silly given that few adults are likely to want to watch a film about drunken teenagers, further explaining the piracy popularity of Project X.

Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent, 2012
rank movie est. downloads worldwide grosses
torrentfreak.com
1 Project X 8,720,000 $100,931,865
2 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol 8,500,000 $694,713,380
3 The Dark Knight Rises 8,230,000 $1,081,041,287
4 The Avengers 8,110,000 $1,511,757,910
5 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 7,850,000 $543,848,418
6 21 Jump Street 7,590,000 $201,585,328
7 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 7,420,000 $232,617,430
8 The Dictator 7,330,000 $177,547,352
9 Ice Age: Continental Drift 6,960,000 $875,093,094
10 The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1 6,740,000 $712,171,856