Close to Oscar award ceremony, Inception dubious winner of most popular downloaded title

The Academy Award ceremony is almost on us. A time to celebrate some of Hollywood’s successes of the year gone by. Or is it? Torrentfreak made a calculation of which title would have won the prize Best Picture award based on popular demand on torrent platforms.

When the dust settled on the counting efforts, a clear winner emerges: Inception, the much lauded movie about the manipulation and theft in dreams. This movie was downloaded almost 14 million times. In second and third place are The Social Network and Toy Story 3, with over 8,5 and 6,5 million downloads respectively.

The high volume of illegal downloads for Inception is ironic as Warner Bros. have gone to great lengths to make Inception available on many platforms to stimulate legal demands. Recently, for example, the studio released the movie as an app for tablets and smart phones.

Torrentfreak claims that the 823 million dollar box office result for Inception shows that downloading does not stand in the way of good cinema-viewing results. We feel that is mapping the costs and benefits the wrong way. Downloading is not hurting cinema’s, it is hurting the home entertainment markets: DVD sales and rentals. Traditionally, the box office and the home viewing markets were about equal size. The last decade, the home viewing market has shrunk rapidly, while the cinemas have seen a slight increase in their markets.