Back in its heyday, HBO’s Game of Thrones regularly topped lists of the most pirated TV shows around. Other shows eventually took over the top after the show ended in May of 2019, but even last year, the series was still going strong.
That’s according to tech firm Akamai (as reported by TheWrap), which just put out a list of the most pirated movies and TV shows of 2021. I did not expect to see the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones to make the list two years out from when it aired, but there it was, barely missing out on the top 10 on the TV show side of things:
- Loki season 1
- WandaVision season 1
- Rick and Morty season 5
- The Falcon and The Winter Soldier season 1
- The Walking Dead season 10
- Game of Thrones season 8
- The Flash season 7
- Vikings season 6
- True Beauty season 1
- Superman & Lois season 1
Seeing Game of Thrones on the list certainly bodes well for the debut of HBO’s upcoming prequel series House of the Dragon, although the big success are the Disney+ superhero series from Marvel Studios. Loki, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier all placed highly on the list, and I imagine Hawkeye may have snuck on if it hadn’t come out so late in the year. Between those shows, The Flash and Superman & Lois, superheroes lay claim to half of the list.
The 10 most pirated movies of 2021
So that’s TV. What do things look like on the movie side of things?
- Godzilla vs. Kong
- Zack Snyder’s Justice League
- Black Widow
- F9
- Mortal Kombat (2021)
- The Suicide Squad
- Cruella
- Wonder Woman 1984
- Raya and the Last Dragon
- Jungle Cruise
It must be noted that a lot of these movies were released simultaneously in theaters and to streaming on either HBO Max or Disney+ during the pandemic, meaning it was easier for pirates to spread them around than it would have been had the films debuted exclusively in theaters. Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Raya and the Last Dragon, meanwhile, were only released on streaming. F9 was released in theaters only, but that clearly didn’t stop pirates.
What will the pirates come for in 2022? They have a lot of options:
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