Hawkeye & Venom 2 Are Week’s Most Pirated Titles

Two Marvel projects have the distinction of being the most pirated titles of the past week: Disney+’s Hawkeye and Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage. After a 2020 largely devoid of Marvel heroics (save for the final season of Agents of SHIELD), 2021 has been bursting with new projects from the comic book behemoth. The MCU has finally entered its Phase 4 with the release of movies like Black Widow and streaming shows like Loki, while even Sony’s normally separate efforts have found themselves tied to the franchise thanks to the onset of multiverse.

Though movie theaters have gradually started to inch back towards normal, streaming remains a major part of the entertainment industry, and that means there is still a boatload of piracy going on. Television shows have long been ripe for pirating, but the decision to send movies to streaming earlier than normal within the past year has led to an increase in the issue on that side as well. Earlier this year, Black Widow became the most pirated film of the pandemic mere weeks after it became available on Disney+. Meanwhile, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings avoided being pirated as much thanks to its exclusive theatrical run.

Based on the numbers for the past week, Marvel titles remain popular choices for piracy. According to Deadline, data company MUSO revealed Hawkeye and Venom 2 were the most pirated projects for the week of November 22-28. Hawkeye topped the television list with an audience share of 26.7%; it was followed by Amazon’s The Wheel of Time and Showtime’s Dexter: New Blood. Meanwhile, Venom 2 was the most pirated movie of the week thanks to its recent VOD debut. It had an even bigger audience share of 38.3% and was followed by No Time to Die and Shang-Chi, among others.

Since exact figures for these kinds of things are hard to track, it’s difficult to say whether Venom 2‘s piracy numbers come close to Black Widow‘s. Still, even without knowing specifics, it’s probably safe to say that the Sony movie is in better shape since it went the exclusive theatrical route. Plus, Venom 2 found plenty of success upon release, so piracy likely hasn’t detracted from its winnings too much. It scored the biggest opening weekend of the entire pandemic back in early October and stands as the second highest-grossing movie of the year on the domestic chart.

Hawkeye is no slouch either. Though Hawkeye trailed Loki in terms of Disney+ viewership, it still has four weeks to build upon its audience and make its mark on Disney+. The Jeremy Renner-led show is the last MCU streaming offering of the year, and with the holiday season ramping up, its Christmas-themed story might pull in even more viewers. If anything, these figures indicate one thing: Hawkeye and Venom 2 hold plenty of appeal for audiences, even if they aren’t accessing it in a legal way.

Hawkeye releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.

Source: Deadline

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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