"Star Trek" Most Downloaded Film of 2009

By our guest blogger, Jonathan Wu

The Hollywood Reporter recently announced that Paramount's "Star Trek" was the most pirated film of 2009.

This announcement seems to fulfill the prophetic presentation made by Paramount's COO, Frederick Huntsberry, in October, in which he spoke about how "Star Trek" had become a hot commodity in piracy circles and stating that illegal file-sharing had advanced from "geek to sleek."

According to TorrentFreak, "Star Trek" was downloaded nearly 11 million times to just beat out "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" in total downloads.

Here are the top 10 downloads of 2009:

1. Star Trek – 10.9m downloads ($385.4m worldwide box-office)
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – 10.6m downloads ($834.9m worldwide box-office)
3. RocknRolla – 9.4m downloads ($25.7m worldwide box-office)
4. The Hangover – 9.1m downloads ($459.4m worldwide box-office)
5. Twilight – 8.7m downloads ($384.9m worldwide box-office)
6. District 9 – 8.2m downloads ($204.5m worldwide box-office)
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 7.9m downloads ($929.3m worldwide box-office)
8. State of Play – 7.44m downloads ($87.7m worldwide box-office)
9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine – 7.2m downloads ($373.0m worldwide box-office)
10. Knowing – 6.9m downloads ($183.2m worldwide box-office)

The Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner puts the blame of rampant piracy of films on problematic release schedules saying, "If you don't want your stuff pirated, think of the CONSUMER, not your pocketbook. Not everyone is going to see this in theaters, NOT everyone lives in the U.S. and NOT everyone owns a Blu-Ray Player. Of course, they're going to try to pad your pocketbook, but the way releases are done now is horrific. Put the movie out on DVD/BR the same day it's in theaters, and release EVERYWHERE universally, not staggered out like most companies do."

Much like the music industry, the film industry is now also facing the heat of illegal downloading from online sources such as torrents. It's because of such threats that Paramount's COO made the presentation about "Star Trek" in the first place--in hopes of discouraging piracy.

If you notice, many of the films that made it onto the top 10 list were actually box office hits grossing tens and hundreds of millions of dollars for their respective studios. But even though these films were able to make so much money, many studios still have voiced out how piracy has hurt the gross of the films. I don't want to be promoting piracy here, but the fact that studios still are complaining about losing money from piracy even after the film was a hit seems to support Gardener's quote about how film studios think more about their wallets rather than their audiences.

What are your thoughts?