SF & Fantasy Dominate 2010 Most Pirate Downloads List

Half of the top 10 are SFX films

James Cameron might believe that 3D movies are the future of cinema, but pirates didn’t seem to mind watching his record breaking Avatar without the aid of silly superspecs. The CG spectacular has topped a list published on Hollywood Reporter of the most illegally-downloaded film of the year.

According to a survey by TorrentFreak, Avatar was illegally downloaded just over 16.5 million times, which marks a 33% increase over the number one illegally-downloaded film of 2009, Star Trek .

But before we get all huffy about, “Well, piracy clearly isn’t killing the film industry,” (Avatar made $2.8 billion worldwide) there’s a different story with the number two movie on the list – Kick-Ass . That performed less well than many had hoped at the cinema, and that can’t have been helped by nearly 11.5 million people sneakily downloading it. Then again, its DVD sales didn’t seem to suffer.

Here’s the full top 10:

1. Avatar (16,580,000)
2. Kick-Ass (11,400,000)
3. Inception (9,720,000)
4. Shutter Island (9,490,000)
5. Iron Man 2 (8,810,000)
6. Clash of the Titans (8,040,000)
7. Green Zone (7,730,000)
8. Sherlock Holmes (7,160,000)
9. The Hurt Locker (6,850,000)
10. Salt (6,700,000)