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While Warner Bros. deservingly celebrates a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations for Sinners, there’s also a darker side to writing Hollywood history. The renewed interest in the film has not just boosted interest through legal channels; it has also tripled the piracy numbers on torrent sites.
In March, the 98th Academy Awards ceremony will return to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where millions of fans will watch the crowning of this year’s “Best Picture”.
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There are currently ten contenders in the race for the prestigious award. The nominees range from Hollywood heavyweights such as F1 and One Battle After Another, to international critical darlings such as Norway’s Sentimental Value and Brazil’s The Secret Agent.
Sinners’ Oscar Nominations Record
While these are all serious contenders, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners clearly stands out. The movie received a record-breaking number of sixteen nominations last week, including one for the best picture category.
The record elevated the press attention for the film, which directly impacted legal demand. After the nominations, Sinners immediately shot back into the Top 10 on Max, while VOD sales on Prime Video and Apple TV also got a boost.
There is also a darker side to this increased exposure in the form of online piracy. Pirates are simply a subset of movie fans, and when legal demand increases, interest in pirate sites follows in the same direction.
We have reported on this phenomenon in the past, but this year offers one of the most clear examples.
Sinners’ Piracy Triples
By looking at the BitTorrent download estimates collected through a large sample of data, we can see the interest in Sinners tripling after the nominations were announced last Thursday.
These data, collected with help from Iknow, also show a healthy 50% boost in downloads for Bugonia, another best picture nominee. However, that pales in comparison to the Sinners surge.
Meanwhile, the 2025 Superman release, which acts as a control group because it wasn’t nominated, saw no download boost at all. This confirms that the other observed increases are triggered by the Oscars nominations.
These findings once again show how the Oscar nominations can have a clear and direct effect on piracy numbers. And if Sinners can convert its record number of nominations into a record number of wins, we can expect an even bigger surge.
In closing, it is worth stressing that the download estimates reported here are based on a large sample of BitTorrent activity. This represents merely a fraction of the overall piracy interest, which also includes pirate streaming portals that are good for many millions of unauthorized views.
