Note: This article is an offshoot of Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “The New Face of Content Piracy,” available exclusively to VIP+ subscribers.
Tom Cruise may have ruled the box office in 2022, but Maverick was no match for the superheroes when it came to illicit film viewing last year.
Exclusive data provided to Variety Intelligence Platform by piracy-focused research firm Muso measured 2022 activity across a wide range of piracy sites, including illegal streaming, torrent, web download and stream-ripping platforms.
The results reveal that superhero films held a dominant share of illegal viewing in 2022, with Marvel and DC releases collectively accounting for 70% of piracy demand (that is, illicit streams, downloads and the like) for the top 10 most pirated film titles of the year. DC’s “Black Adam” alone claimed a 9% share despite being released as late as October.
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Of course, “Top Gun: Maverick,” with its 8% share, was no slouch, but the discrepancy between its top spot at the 2022 domestic box office and its lower position among the most pirated titles reflects the streaming revolution’s impact on both illegal and legal film viewing.
Per Muso data, spikes in a film’s piracy tend to coincide with its release on digital platforms, which enables the availability of high-quality pirated streams or downloads, as opposed to bootleg “cam-rip” versions illicitly recorded in a theater. These copies, per a Muso analyst, “often provide an unsatisfactory viewing experience and can drive frustrated consumers into theaters for a better experience.”
In some cases, sheer demand for a film can outweigh such concerns. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” for instance, saw enough piracy in just the final three weeks of the year to rank as the third-most-pirated title of Q4 (behind only “Black Adam” and Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”). Generally, however, HD copies serve as the most powerful drivers of piracy for popular films.
The shortening of theatrical windows since the COVD-19 pandemic has led to high-quality viewing options arriving quicker than ever. Indeed, titles like “The Batman” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” landed on streaming services a mere 45-50 days after their theatrical debuts.
“Top Gun,” on the other hand, had a nearly three-month window ahead of its release on VOD, with another four months passing before its streaming debut. Producer-star Cruise’s insistence on a long theatrical-exclusive run for the film cemented its box-office dominance and also helps account for its slightly lower levels of piracy, due to the lack of a high-quality digital copy on the market for months following its release.
On a similar note, Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” saw a huge spike in piracy nearly 90 days after its December 2021 theatrical release, and three days ahead of its digital VOD release (after a high-quality copy leaked online shortly beforehand). Unlike most Marvel movies, “Spider-Man” is a co-production between Disney’s Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, meaning the film is not subject to Disney’s approximately 45-day theatrical window and does not stream on Disney+.
That latter point also illustrates the significance of a studio’s streaming reach to piracy of its product. Sony doesn't have a proprietary streaming platform of its own, and due to a longstanding pay TV deal (which ended following its 2021 slate), “No Way Home” has only been available to stream in the U.S. thus far via Starz — which, as of Q3 2022, has a domestic subscriber base about one-fourth the size of Disney+’s.
That factor — and, more than likely, a good deal of resulting confusion among consumers — helped keep piracy demand for “No Way Home” above some 2022 blockbusters, including “Uncharted” and “Doctor Strange,” in the latter months of the year, according to Muso data. (Muso did not disclose exact numbers for the films’ pirated streams and downloads.)
It's an unfortunate fact that many streaming players must face: In-demand film assets may not be enough to build scale in the new world of content piracy.
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