Box office earnings often say a lot about any film’s popularity, but more obscure numbers tell a similar story. 2022’s piracy charts highlight many of Marvel and DC’s blockbusters andUnchartedandTop Gun: Maverickas the movies with more illegal downloads worldwide.
While piracy has always been a concern for movie studios, the increased importance of streaming,new platforms like Disney Plus, HBO Max, and Paramount Plus, and shorter theatrical release windows for big-budget movies have all combined to make internet pirates’ jobs a bit easier. After all, once any given piece of content becomes available digitally, it’s only a matter of minutes before it finds its way to illegal download sites, especially in countries where legit services are more cost prohibitive or simply unavailable to their populations.
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Thanks toVariety’s reporting on content piracy and data gathered by the piracy-focused researchers at Muso, it’s possible to know that Tom Cruise’s exploits in theTop Gunsequel were no match for superhero movies.Spider-Man: No Way Homewas the absolute winner by netting roughly 21% of piracy traffic in 2022. The top 5 spots are all taken by comic book characters, withThe Batman(13%),Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness(10%),Thor: Love and Thunder(9%), andBlack Adam(9%) leading the rankings.
Surprisingly, the first non-superpowered individual is Tom Holland’s Nathan Drake. So, whileUncharted’s $401m box office revenuepales in comparison toTop Gun: Maverick’s $1.489 billion, Sony’s video game adaptation arrival on Netflix made it quite the hit in sketchy domains. Much like in Disney Plus' real streaming charts,Eternalsranked high (8%), asTop Gun: Maverick(8%),Jurassic World Dominion(7%), andEncanto(6%) close out a top 10 that add up to around 91% of all illegal downloads.
Several factors come into play to determine what makes a movie popular among pirates, though many of them correlate to their success on licensed streaming platforms, as seen fromBlack Adam,Uncharted, andEternals’viewership, movies that many preferred to put on their “wait for streaming” list. Perhaps Paramount’s strategy withTop Gun: Maverickcould be a templatefor studios in the future since the movie’s profits were certainly boosted by it going way past the 45-day release window that’s become the norm in Hollywood.
China closing off its borders to the MCU and DC must have made superhero movies more popular among pirates. However, withAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniasignaling Marvel’s returnto the mainland,Avatar: The Way of Waterlooks like a clear-cut favorite to take the crown in 2023.
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