Tech & Biz

Dark Knight: Highest grossing and Most Pirated

by jordan | November 22, 2008 at 09:13 am

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The Dark Knight, featuring Heath Ledger's riveting performance as the Joker, was both the highest-grossing and most-pirated movie of the year.

How can this be?! The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would have us believe that video piracy (which they define as both downloading and bootlegging) dissuades would-be viewers from putting butt to cinema seat. Clearly that's not true, as reciepts and online data show.

However, it was stunning to hear movie industry execs then claim that the reason the movie was so successful was because of their anti-piracy efforts. That was clearly untrue at the time, and now Parker Mason alerts us to the fact that The Dark Knight was not just the biggest grossing film, but also the most pirated film of the year. Of course, if you believed the studio execs, that would be impossible. After all, if so many people are downloading the movie, then clearly they're "stealing" from the industry and would never go see the movie.

But, seeing that the movie made record profits, it seems to show that's simply incorrect.

Clearly, if a movie begs to be seen on the big screen with big sound, then so shall it be. I daresay the motion picture industry, from studio to cinema, faces greater challenges than a bunch of Demonoid users: the moviegoing experience itself has grown expensive and annoying enough (adverts?!) to dissuade cinemagoers from seeing the big screen as the primary viewing option.