Do Oscar nominations correlate to increased piracy? Let’s find out!

TorrentFreak keeps a tally on the most pirated films each week, but this week is special as it comes on the coattails of the Oscars. People were aware of the nominations for a while so one would assume that the most pirated films would be those films that received the most nominations.

My hypothesis is partly true, but leave it up to the average Internet users’ taste in movies to always surprise you. Speaking of surprises, the most pirated film this week was Ben Stiller’s and Eddie Murphy’s crime caper Tower Heist. This is the second week the film has been at the number one spot.

The Oscar nomination may have helped Martin Scorsese’s Hugo as it was number five last week, but it’s been upgraded to number two this week.

The third spot goes to the animated epic The Adventures of Tintin. The Grey was at number eight last week but has been propelled to the fourth spot this week.

The rest of the list is populated by films that I forgot even existed, but BitTorrent users seemed to have liked them. From the number five spot to the tenth spot, the list goes: The Three Musketeers, The Woman In Black, Underworld Awakening, Immortals, Puss in Boots, and Jack and Jill.

So the Oscars seemed to have not had much of an effect this week on pirated movies, but there may be an effect next week now that the winners have been announced. I postulate that The Artist will definitely show up on the list next week at maybe even the number one spot due to its winning Best Picture.