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This article was published on December 27, 2012

2012’s most pirated movie is Project X, despite being a box office flop and panned by critics


2012’s most pirated movie is Project X, despite being a box office flop and panned by critics

The most pirated film of 2012 has been revealed over on TorrentFreak today and it looks like a rather odd result. Project X was downloaded around 8,720,000 times, making it the top result.

You may have already seen TorrentFreak’s top table of pirated TV which showed the top result as Game of Thones. This is not so surprising as the show has been fairly successful and spawned a truckload of memes and threads all over the web.

Project X‘ is the tale of a teen party that gets out of control. According to TorrentFreak, it beat the top names you might have seen and heard about through the year including Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The Dark Knight Rises and even the seemingly never-ending sparkly vampire installment of the Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1.

TorrentFreak collects its own data for the end of year run downs. It includes reports from BitTorrent Trackers and all release formats downloaded from January 1 until mid-December are presented.

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It’s an interesting result given the top grossing movies of the year do not even feature in the top ten and Project X was received with mostly negative reviews.

As TF points out – pirating these movies does not have a clear effect on box office revenues, but the effects on DVD and streaming formats might be more profound.

Besides being panned in reviews, Project X attracted some fans in the form of people who decided to copy the wild party in the film. In probably the most complimentary review, it was dubbed the “Animal House of the iPhone generation“.

Though it might not be to everyone’s taste, maybe it reveals the wilder side of BitTorrenters. Not the nerds in the basements but the animals at your birthday party who took notes?

Image Credit: Loic Venance / Getty Images

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