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Wolverine Box Office Stats #1

I promised I'd keep looking for some hard stats about whether the piracy of Wolverine hurt or helped. Duncan Riley of Inquisitr doesn't have hard stats, but he has some soft Google numbers:

“Wolverine pirated” delivers a staggering 1.42 million results in Google despite only now being released. That’s 1.42million mentions of the pirated copy that wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been pirated. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers 4.9 million results despite only being released this weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop has 3.5 million results despite being a number one at the box office months ago. Like it or not, the pirated copy of Wolverine drove a lot of attention to the movie, and that attention helped result in a number one at the box office, and the second biggest take in the X-Men franchise.

Wolverine tops box office not despite of, but because of the leaked copy

Inquisitr also has another post speculating on a way that the movie industry could co-opt the piracy networks. I'm not 100% convinced, but I am certain that the piracy is not going away, so the movie industry needs to find a way to turn it to best advantage.

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.