One of the major drawbacks of the streaming age, at least for the studios and companies responsible, is that having a movie or TV show land on a platform significantly increases the chances and volume of piracy. Anyone who claims otherwise is kidding themselves, when availability doesn’t always equate to a subscription.
No Time to Die may have recently become the highest-grossing Hollywood blockbuster to have been released since 2019 after passing Fast & Furious 9, but Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond is also available on VOD, so it’s not a shock to discover the 25th installment in the franchise was the most pirated title of the week running November 15-21.
On the episodic front, Amazon’s splashy new fantasy series The Wheel of Time has taken top honors, with the data being provided to Deadline by piracy analytics firm MUSO, who are quickly becoming a valuable source in the industry for when studios and production companies are looking to track down and eradicate bootleg copies from the internet.
A combination of day-and-date streaming releases and the effects of the pandemic has seen piracy increase massively over the last eighteen months, with high-quality copies of some of the biggest films and shows of the year being widely shared on various torrenting sites without any sort of regulation.
