Why renters and pirates watch such different movies
I'm just as obsessed with lists as everyone else, so it caught my eye the other day when Time put two lists up against each other--the most rented movies at Netflix vs. the most illegally downloaded movies from TorrentFreak. The comparison was eye-catching, since if you just compiled the top five entries from each list, as Time did, there was no overlap at all.Netflix's most rented movies of all time was led by "The Blind Side," with "Crash" at No. 2, "The Bucket List" at No. 3, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at No. 4 and "The Hurt Locker" at No. 5
TorrentFreak's most pirated films list was led by (no surprise here) "Avatar," followed by "The Dark Knight," "Transformers," "Inception" and "The Hangover." So what does it tell us?
Well, first off, it reminds us that while the MPAA regularly works itself up into a lather about how piracy is undoing the very foundations of the movie biz, that the most pirated movies of all time made tons of moola at the box office, raising the very real possibility that a lot of kids who watch pirated movies also go see them in a theater. But I digress.
Time's theory about why the two lists look so different was simple: Dudes really like to steal movies; their moms like to rent them. But it's actually a little more complicated than that. I'd argue that the lists demonstrate that TorrentFreak customers are early adopters while Netflix subscribers are late adopters. Being largely young, Torrent fans go for the eye candy movies that have the biggest buzz of the moment while the Netflix crowd, which skews older, prefers movies that have a more cerebral sort of buzz, the prestige of critical cachet.
In fact, four of the top 5 Netflix films were Oscar best picture nominees. And the broader Netflix list includes a host of Oscar best picture winners, including "The Departed" (No. 6), "No Country for Old Men" (No.10) and "Slumdog Millionaire" (No. 15). If you go deeper into Torrent's top 10, you find even more movies of the moment--such non-critical favorites as "Kick-Ass (No. 7) and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (No. 10).
Hard Candy Torrent - News
Being largely young, Torrent fans go for the eye candy movies that have the biggest buzz of the moment while the Netflix crowd, which skews older, prefers movies that have a more cerebral sort of buzz, the prestige of critical cachet.
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