Top 10 also includes Django Unchained and Fast and Furious 6.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was the most downloaded film from illegal pirate sites in 2013, according to blog TorrentFreak.

The first part in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy tale took more than $1bn at the global box office following its release in Dec 2012.

It generated an estimated 8.4m illegal downloads through BitTorrent networks.

Django Unchained and Fast And Furious 6 ranked second and third respectively.

Notable absentees included The Hunger Games: Catching and Man of Steel.

Gangster Squad is perhaps the biggest surprise in this year’s list, as it was poorly received by critics and proved disappointing at the box office.

The list shows that movie piracy remains popular, especially for films that are not yet available for download or streaming due to release delays.

RankFilmDownloads
1The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey8.4m
2Django Unchained8.1m
3Fast And Furious 67.9m
4Iron Man 37.6m
5Silver Linings Playbook7.5m
6Star Trek Into Darkness7.4m
7Gangster Squad7.2m
8Now You See Me7m
9The Hangover Part 36.9m
10World War Z6.7m

 

The data is estimated by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.