HBO's "Game of Thrones" took the crown - once again - for the most pirated TV show of the year, while Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" was the most pirated movie of 2015. This marks the fourth year in a row "Game of Thrones" was named the most pirated TV show with an estimated 14.4 million downloads of the season 5 finale, according to TorrentFreak, a website that tracks piracy.
AMC's "The Walking Dead" stood firmly in second place with an estimated 6.9 downloads while "The Big Bang Theory" rounded out the top three with 4.4 million. "Game of Thrones" was also the most downloaded show overall for the year, TorrentFreak told Entertainment Weekly.
This past year HBO had made multiple attempts to stop "Game of Thrones" from being illegally downloaded. The premium cable network first decided to air the Season 5 premiere on the same date all over the world. They also introduced HBO Now, a way to watch the network's shows without a cable subscription.
Still, the first four episodes of "Game of Thrones" were leaked online before the Season 5 premiered after someone uploaded them from the DVDs that were sent out to critics for review. Despite the large number of illegal downloads, the show still had yet another huge year, with record ratings of around 20 million viewers, and 12 Emmy Awards.
While the most pirated TV show of 2015 was not too surprising, the top movie was a little more surprising considering it was actually released in 2014. Christopher Nolan's space adventure film "Intersteller" starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway was pirated 46,762,310 times, according to Variety. Next in line were "Furious 7," which was downloaded 44,794,877 times and "Avengers: Age of Ultron" with 41,594,159.
