Entertainment

‘Avatar’ tops list of the most-pirated films of 2010: report

James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic “Avatar” became the highest-grossing film of all time in 2010. The Hollywood Reporter revealed Tuesday that it was also the most pirated movie of the year.

“Avatar” was illegally downloaded from BitTorrent websites 16,580,000 times in 2010, according to the blog TorrentFreak. That figure represents a 33 percent increase in downloads from last year’s most pirated film, “Star Trek,” which had just under 11 million downloads.

The superhero satire “Kick Ass” came in at No. 2 on the most-pirated list with 11,400,000 downloads, despite making just $48 million at the box office compared to “Avatar’s” $2.8 billion.

The top five was rounded out by “Inception,” “Shutter Island” and “Iron Man 2.”

“The Hurt Locker,” 2009’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture — directed by James Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow — was ninth on the most-pirated list. Producers of the Iraq war drama in June filed a lawsuit accusing as many as 5,000 BitTorrent file sharers of copyright infringement.

“Avatar” was produced by Twentieth Century Fox, which is owned by News Corp., the parent company of NewsCore.