Poor Paramount.
Online pirates pinched more than 20 million copies of “Star Trek” and the sequel to “Transformers,” giving those two Paramount Pictures releases the dubious distinction of being the most ripped-off films of the year, according to a report released by file-sharing tracking service TorrentFreak.
Though the “Transformers” sequel bested “Star Trek” at the box office, Trekkie faves Kirk and Spock were more popular than morphing car-robots among digital thieves.
TorrentFreak reported that “Star Trek” was illegally downloaded just under 11 million times, while 10.6 million copies of “Transformers” were lifted.
While precise data is hard to come by, the pirated copies certainly seem to have cost the studio. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, worldwide revenue at the Viacom-owned studio fell $535 million, or 13 percent, to $3.7 billion.
“Transformers” still ranks as 2009’s highest-grossing film at the domestic box office, raking in $402 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. “Star Trek” pulled in $258 million in the US during its run, putting it at No. 6.
Other movies on TorrentFreak’s top 10 most illegally downloaded list include hits like “The Hangover,” “Twilight,” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” all of which also rank in the top 10 in terms of box-office gross.
But the list also includes films like “Knowing,” “State of Play,” and “District 9,” none of which rank in the top 20 in terms of box-office gross.
“As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office and on [rogue file sharer] BitTorrent,” said TorrentFreak of its report.
” ‘Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs’ and ‘2012’ are ranked second and fourth based on their worldwide grosses but didn’t make it into the top 10 list of most swapped movies.”
Piracy is estimated to cost the movie industry around $18 billion in revenue worldwide, with about $6 billion of that loss coming in the US alone.
The illegal downloads could also cost Viacom-owned Paramount bragging rights. Warner Bros. currently ranks as the highest-grossing studio overall, bringing in just under $2 billion for the year.
Holding down the second position is Paramount, which trails Warner Bros. by exactly $508 million. Warner Bros.’ two biggest hits of the year, “The Hangover” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” were pirated a total of 17.2 million times, ranking them fourth and seventh on TorrentFreak’s list.