With thirteen nominations, "Oppenheimer" has positioned itself as the leading candidate to win several Academy Awards in March. Interestingly, these nominations didn't move the piracy needle. This is in stark contrast to other Best Picture contenders, such as โPoor Thingsโ and โAnatomy of a Fall,โ which saw a significant rise in piracy.
The Oscars are the most anticipated film awards show of the year, as the elusive statue is widely considered Hollywood's highest award.
Winners are selected by members of the academy after extensive screening sessions. In the past, copies of advanced filters were leaked en masse, creating an annual bounty hunt for online pirates.
Oscar Torrentsโฆ
The troubling relationship between the Oscars and pirates peaked in 2007 when The Pirate Bay promoted an alternative voting process. Through Oscartorrents.compirates could download the nominated films, review them and vote for their favorite.
This dishonest alternative to the Oscars made a mockery of Hollywood by attracting more than 100,000 "pirated" votes and many more illegal downloads. In the end, both pirates and Academy members chose The Departed as Best Picture, and Martin Scorsese was named Best Director.
After its first awards show, OscarTorrents never returned, but that doesn't mean pirates have lost interest in the annual event. While the Oscar candidates no longer leaked online todaymost of the contenders are already available on pirate sites.
Increase in piracy for Oscar candidates
If we look at the download figures for all the 'Best Picture' candidates, we can see that the increase in annual nominations is still intact. An extensive data set of BitTorrent downloads shows that "smaller" movies enjoy relatively larger piracy spikes.
โPoor Thingsโ has a 124% increase in downloads if we compare the numbers for this Tuesday and Wednesday, with the same days last week. โAnatomy of a Fallโ saw a 71% increase in downloads, followed by โMaestroโ and โPast Lives,โ respectively.
Below is an overview of all the findings. This includes all of the Best Picture nominees except โThe Hot Spotโ and โAmerican Fiction,โ which are either not yet available or had a small number of downloads.
| Movie | Increase (January 16/17 vs. 23/24) |
|---|---|
| Anatomy of a fall | 71% |
| Barbie | 4% |
| The remains | 18% |
| Flower Moon Killers | 30% |
| Teacher | 53% |
| oppenheimer | 3% |
| Past Lives | 48% |
| poor things | 124% |
Overall, we can see that relatively smaller films get a bigger boost from piracy. For Oppenheimer and Barbie, the nomination effect is minimal and probably not statistically significant. Of course, these movies have more downloads and views on pirate sites in general.
Pirates are people too
This surge in interest in lesser-known films is likely not limited to pirate sites. The additional exposure from Oscar nominations generally increases interest in the films through legal channels as well. This shows that, in addition to prestige, an Oscar can also generate income.
The figures presented here illustrate once again that pirates are no different from their non-piracy counterparts. They are as susceptible to publicity and media attention as everyone else.
With this in mind, we can confidently predict a massive increase in piracy if one of the smaller films wins Best Picture in March. On the other hand, an Oppenheimer victory is not expected to change the situation much.
