In the never-ending battle to combat movie piracy, director James Cameron says that his latest movie, “Avatar” is a step in the right direction.
By having the movie shown in 3-D, Cameron assserts that pirates will have a difficult time distributing the film via file sharing.
However, it appears that the latest statistics on “Avatar”‘s piracy rate may not support his assertion.
According to the UK’s Times, “Avatar” was downloaded one million times in its first week of release. By comparison, the latest “Twilight” installment was downloaded 610,000 times in the same time frame.
A report in the Hollywood Reporter’s THR, Esq. blog indicates that “Avatar” may have even been leaked on-line several days before its world-wide theatircal release.
But if the movie is as popular among pirates as the stats indicate, wouldn’t have have some kind of negative impact on the box-office? Not so far, with “Avatar” leading the box-office for the past three weeks and passing one billion dollars in ticket sales world-wide earlier this week.
The stats seems to back up that while some users will download a high profile movie to check it out at home, they will still head out to theaters to have the full experience there. You may recall that a similar thing happened last year with the leak of a working print of “X: Men Origins: Wolverine.”
It could also cut down on DVD sales – for example, although I highly enjoyed Avatar, I have no desire whatsoever to buy it once it comes out on DVD, because I know the viewing experience won’t be anywhere near as good in 2D.