The Interview was illegally downloaded 750,000 times on Christmas

While crowds flocked to the 331 theaters around the country that decided to show The Interview on Christmas, and the lazy could stream the controversial film for as little as $5.99 on YouTube, pirates still circulated the film for free — and it was downloaded 750,000 times.

But don't feel bad for Sony just yet: many of those 331 theaters' screenings were sold out, and the film could be on track to make a couple million dollars this weekend, especially once all the legal streaming purchases are tallied. Not so bad for a film that at one point wasn't going to be released at all.

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Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.