MOVIE NEWS – In the midst of the summer of 2016, it kind of looked like 2016 won’t be a great year for films, with many of the anticipated blockbusters disappointing fans and critics. Fortunately, things worked out later, and in fact, 2016 turned out to be a pretty good year concerning great movies. Quite a few people wanted to see those movies, but there’s a big number of them, who just didn’t want to pay to see them, so they pirated them instead. As 2016 is over, it looks like Deadpool will get the honour of being the most pirated movie of the year.

The news comes from MovieWeb and TorrentFreak: the latter observed what movies were downloaded the most throughout the year on public torrent sites. After every download had been counted for, it seems that Ryan Reynolds’ R-rated superhero flick came on top. Deadpool still made huge profits at the box office, and it was one of the biggest surprises of the year both critically and financially. It’s also the most successful in the X-Men franchise to date. Thus, the pirating didn’t seem to hurt the movie in the end, and it’s the same case with other movies at the box office. High popularity means high demand for piracy as well.

The superhero movies from 2016 were particularly in high demand, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, given how popular they are. The only one of those that didn’t rank up on the top 10 was Doctor Strange, but it’s comprehensible since the movie came out in November, it probably didn’t have time to rank up on the illegal downloads. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice came in at number two, which was easily one of the most divisive movies of the year, perhaps only rivaled by Suicide Squad, the other Warner Bros., DC Comics-based movie released this year. That movie came in at number eight on the list, but Batman V Superman had a five-month head start regarding its release date, so that is probably why Suicide Squad was so much lower on the list.

It’s also notable that the top three most pirated movies, which had Captain America: Civil War at the number three spot were all in order of their respective theatrical release date. That pattern broke at number four, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens going up on the list again. Once again the impact of piracy on the profitability of that movie seemed to be minimal since it went on to become the third-highest-grossing movie of all time with more than $2 billion worldwide. The only movie on the list that sort of broke the pattern of being a hit at the box office was Independence Day: Resurgence, which came in at number 7. That movie disappointed in nearly every way, bringing in only $387 million worldwide and becoming one of the worst reviewed movies of the summer.

X-Men: Apocalypse maybe a bit of a “bomb” here. The movie still made $543 million worldwide, but that is a sheer decline from the previous movie in the franchise: X-Men: Days of Future Past. That movie earned $747 million worldwide and was received much more positively by fans and critics. Warcraft is at number six on the list, and while this movie made less than X-Men: Apocalypse ($433 million), it would be hard to call it a “flop,” since it is now the highest-grossing video game movie ever made. The list was rounded out by a couple more big hits, including Pixar’s Finding Dory, which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide and came in at number nine. Finally, in the number ten spot was The Revenant, the movie that finally earned Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar. It is likely that him winning the Academy Award helped push that movie into the top ten. You can check out the full list of 2016’s most pirated movies for yourself below.

1. Deadpool – $783,770,709

 

2. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice – $868,160,194

 

3. Captain America: Civil War – $783,770,709

 

4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – $1,153,304,495

 

5. X-Men: Apocalypse – $543,934,787

 

6. Warcraft – $433,125,655

 

7. Independence Day $387,644,286

 

8. Suicide Squad $746,100,054

 

9. Finding Dory – $1,022,701,881

 

10. The Revenant – $532,950,503