Most pirated movies of 2016: Deadpool, Batman v Superman, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Other top illegal downloads included Finding Dory and Suicide Squad.

Superhero movies Deadpool, Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Captain America: Civil War have been named as the most pirated films of 2016, according to TorrentFreak. Other titles that were watched illegally over the last 12 months were Independence Day: Resurgence and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, suggesting that sci-fi and fantasy were the most popular movies across several download platforms.

"While filesharers may have a slight preference for geeky films, in general there's a high correlation between piracy and box-office sales," reported TorrentFreak.

Deadpool, 20th Century Fox's R-rated take on the Marvel Comics character, made $783.1m (£683.1m) globally at the box office. Considering the film centred on a relatively new hero in terms of existing movies and cinematic universes, that's relatively impressive given that Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice only fared slightly better than that, making $873.3m.

Marvel Studios' Captain America: Civil War surpassed the $1bn mark.

It could easily be argued that comic book-based outings and sci-fi films are some of the best seen on the big screen given how heavily they feature CGI effects and utilise 3D technology, so it's interesting that many people would be satisfied to download potentially lower-quality versions of the films.

Then again, superhero films these days tend to be some of the most eagerly anticipated releases with staggered release dates in the UK, US and now further east, and some fans evidently just cannot wait to check them out.

TorrentFreak's list is based on a number of sources, including statistics that come from public BitTorrent trackers. Other movies that rounded out the top 10 list included Warcraft, X-Men: Apocalypse and Suicide Squad. The only titles that didn't fit in with the obvious superhero/sci-fi trend were Disney's animated sequel Finding Dory and survival drama The Revenant.