The Walking Dead's hotly-anticipated Season 9 mid-season opener 'Adaption' is set to premiere this Sunday on AMC. However, subscribers to AMC Premiere are already enjoying early access - as are huge numbers of pirate site users, thanks to a leak.

The Walking Dead is one of the most talked about and popular TV shows of recent times.

The blood-and-guts zombie-fest is followed by millions of dedicated fans, who clamor to watch each new episode as soon as they air.

The AMC show was renewed January 2018 for an impressive ninth season, which got underway early October last year. On November 28, 2018, episode eight (‘Evolution’) marked the mid-season break, with episode nine (‘Adaption’) set to air on TV this coming Sunday.

AMC, however, dangled the carrot by offering S09E09 a week early to subscribers of its $4.99 per month AMC Premiere service. With no ads and on demand, it’s likely the offer will have tempted some Walking Dead fans to part with their cash. For everyone else, there are pirate sites.

Visitors to torrent and streaming sites can now easily find ‘Adaption’ available to download or stream. The source for most copies is cited as WEBRIP, which means that they most probably originate from AMC’s service.

While traffic to streaming sites for specific titles is not easy to measure, the main torrents for the latest episode of the hit show are proving to be very popular with downloaders, as they have for pretty much every episode since the show started. As it happens, last year the show reached somewhat of a peak on the pirate high seas.

In TorrentFreak’s 2018 annual list of most-torrented TV shows, The Walking Dead took the top spot, with The Flash and The Big Bang Theory taking second and third places respectively.

However, instead of going bananas over the revelation, AMC took to Twitter to celebrate the event, even though they chose to link to another publication reporting on our stats instead. Awww…

Always nice to be number one https://t.co/kDaXNURGJl — The Walking Dead (@TheWalkingDead) January 1, 2019 We forgive you, AMC ;)

Whether this leak of ‘Adaption’ will have an impact on viewing figures, either positively or negatively, will remain to be seen but AMC will have definitely figured piracy into the equation .