Paramount PicturesIt's ironic that a film about a crook was the most pirated movie of 2014.
Leonardo DiCaprio's The Wolf of Wall Street was illegally downloaded more than 30 million times via torrent websites, Variety reports. Martin Scorsese directed the movie, which was adapted from former stockbroker Jordan Belfort's memoir. The Wolf of Wall Street was nominated for five Academy Awards.
Kyle Chandler, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey and Margot Robbie co-starred.
Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen, featuring the voice talents of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel, came in a close second with 29.919 million downloads. Still, the film has earned $1.274 billion. Per Excipio, 2014's top 20 pirated films were downloaded a gross total of approximately 483 million times.
There were some tracking issues, however. Downloads of the original 1987 RoboCop and its reboot were combined to reach 29.9 million; it's unclear how many downloads the 2014 version was responsible for. In 2014, Summit Entertainment released The Legend of Hercules and Paramount Pictures released Hercules, creating a potential duplicate title in the data set; Excipio said the former was more popular.
Here is the complete list of pirated films for 2014:
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.