Most members of the general moviegoing public aren’t willing or financially able to shell out monthly subscription fees to Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Prime Video, Apple, Paramount Plus, or any of the other major streaming services, so it’s no surprise that piracy has rocketed as customers pick and choose which platforms deserve their hard-earned cash.
After making the contentious call to make the entire slate of 2021 releases available on-demand the same day they hit theaters, Warner Bros. were arguably hit the hardest by piracy last year, with MonsterVerse sequel Godzilla vs. Kong and blockbuster sci-fi Dune the only two titles that didn’t under-perform at the box office.
In the case of the latter, that’s even more impressive now that Adam Wingard’s monster mash has been named as the most-pirated movie of 2021 by digital research firm Akami. The clash of the titans benefited massively from being one of the very few Hollywood efforts to hit big in China, where it brought in $188 million, so it wasn’t affected by illegal downloads all that much.
The rest of the Top 10 is rounded out by Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Black Widow, Fast & Furious 9, Mortal Kombat, The Suicide Squad, Cruella, Wonder Woman 1984, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Jungle Cruise, a telling set of rankings when you consider that F9 was the only one of those films to play exclusively on the big screen.
