Top 20 Most Pirated Movies of 2014 Led by ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ ‘Frozen,’ ‘Gravity’

“The Wolf of Wall Street,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Disney’s animated smash “Frozen” were the two most-pirated movies for the year — with each title downloaded about 30 million times by torrent users worldwide in 2014.

Alfonso Cuarón’s space epic “Gravity” followed with 29.4 million downloads by pirates, then Warner Bros.’ “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” (27.6 million) and Marvel’s “Thor: The Dark World” (25.7 million), according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio. The firm compiled the data for the period between Jan. 1 and Dec. 23, 2014.

Among the top 20 most-pirated titles, superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and action movies were well represented, as were Oscar-nominated films (“Wolf of Wall Street,” “Gravity,” “12 Years a Slave,” “American Hustle”).

One issue in tracking the most-pirated films of the year was that MGM’s 2014 “RoboCop” reboot has the same name as the original 1987 version. Downloads of the two movies combined to reach nearly 30 million, according to Excipio; however, it’s not clear how many of those the most recent “RoboCop” accounted for.

As with “RoboCop,” there was another potential duplicate title in the data set: In addition to “The Legend of Hercules” was the 2014 “Hercules” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (released in July 2014). However, Excipio confirmed the latter movie was not as popular on torrent sites even though it raked in more than “Legend of Hercules” at the box office.

Here is the full list of top 20 pirated movies of the year ranked by number of downloads (along with studio and original theatrical release date):

1. “The Wolf of Wall Street”: 30.035 million (Paramount, Dec. 25, 2013)
2. “Frozen”: 29.919 million (Disney, Nov. 27, 2013)
3. “RoboCop”*: 29.879 million (MGM, Feb. 12, 2014; and Orion, July 17, 1987)
4. “Gravity”: 29.357 million (Warner Bros., Oct. 4, 2013)
5. “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”: 27.627 million (Warner Bros., Dec. 13, 2013)
6. “Thor: The Dark World”: 25.749 million (Disney/Marvel, Nov. 8, 2013)
7. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”: 25.628 million (Disney/Marvel, April 4, 2014)
8. “The Legend of Hercules”: 25.137 million (Summit, Jan. 10, 2014)
9. “X-Men: Days of Future Past”: 24.380 million (20th Century Fox, May 23, 2014)
10. “12 Years a Slave”: 23.653 million (Fox Searchlight, Oct. 18, 2013)
11. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”: 23.543 million (Lionsgate, Nov. 22, 2013)
12. “American Hustle”: 23.143 million (Sony/Columbia, Dec. 13, 2013)
13. “300: Rise of an Empire”: 23.096 million (Warner Bros., March 7, 2014)
14. “Transformers: Age of Extinction”: 21.65 million (Paramount, June 27, 2014)
15. “Godzilla”: 20.956 million (Warner Bros., May 16, 2014)
16. “Noah”: 20.334 million (Paramount, March 28, 2014)
17. “Divergent”: 20.312 million (Lionsgate, March 21, 2014)
18. “Edge of Tomorrow”: 20.299 million (Warner Bros., June 6, 2014)
19. “Captain Phillips”: 19.817 million (Sony/Columbia, Oct. 11, 2013)
20. “Lone Survivor”: 19.130 million (Universal, Dec. 25, 2013)

* Combines data for both 1987 and 2014 versions.
Source: Excipio

VARIETY By Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor@xpangler December 28, 2014 | 09:06AM PT