Besides, the difference in the impact of Internet theft on movies isn’t proportional to the costs of the movie. So, for example, a big studio production such as Avatar, which cost around $500 million to make, has, according to the Bay Area-based tracking service BayTSP, been illegally downloaded on eDonkey and BitTorrent 13 million times, while a medium budget movie such as The Social Network, which cost $40 million to make has been downloaded 9 million times over the last six months. The superhero movie Kick-Ass, which cost around $30 million to make and collected $48 million at the domestic box office (that’s only $24 million to the studio after the exhibitor’s share), sold approximately 6.1 million tickets. Meanwhile, according to TorrentFreak, it was the second-most downloaded movie in 2010, with 11.4 million downloads worldwide. The comparison between Avatar and Kick-Ass is particularly instructive: the medium budget movie cost 15 percent of the big studio production, but suffered almost as many illegal downloads, crippling its chances to recoup its investment.
Another instructive example is the critically acclaimed The Hurt Locker, which cost $15 million to produce and came in ninth on the TorrentFreak 2010 list with almost 7 million downloads. Its overall worldwide box office was a disappointing $49 million, despite winning a DGA Award and an Oscar for best picture and best director. Given the dramatic impact of Internet theft on this small budget indie, it’s the difference between a profitable movie and breaking even, between financial success and failure.
